Jaroslav MAKSYMIV. Prikarpatye. Summer day.
1997. Distemper.
FROM MYSTERIOUS AND UNUSUAL SOURCES
Oleksandr Nayden tells about Slavko Maksymiv who belongs to such painters (e.g. M. Pryimachenko, Nykyfor Drovniak) that have a direct genetic link with the ancient everyday principles of world perception. The painter's mechanism of genetic memory and historic penetration "switches on" from the meeting with life realities and not from cultural erudition. Slavko was born in 1962 in the town of Brody, L'viv region. He dreamed to become a painter but only managed to finish a professional college and receive the trade of a "wall decorator". In his works the author depicts what he has seen on his own only. They have their artistic attraction and originality. The contemporary neomythologism is achieved through ornamental depiction of different details as well as through figurative stylization of objects. The master tries to depict historical monuments, temples as real as they are, but in depiction of trees, rocks and hills on the contrary denies the formal reality in favor of plastic shapes and space rhythmics. Everything that we perceive as being usual and everyday in the master's works for him is full of mystery, people's desires, mundane and divine phenomena.