The virtual personal exhibition of Nadiya Padurska's graphic works "Painted Paradise between Heaven and Earth" from the museum collection "Modern Ukrainian Fine Art" is presented on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the birth of the amateur artist, who is boundlessly in love with fine arts, Ukrainian song and poetry.
    Nadiya Ivanivna Padurska was born on April 26, 1943 in Pomichna, Dobrovelychkiv district, Kirovohrad region. He has been disabled since childhood after receiving a spinal injury. She worked as a decorator in the "Mir" cinema in her hometown. Since 2008, he has lived in the Vlasiv boarding house for war and labor veterans with a geriatric department, Svitlovodsk, Kirovohrad region. Participant of art exhibitions as part of the II All-Union Festival of Folk Art (1987) and the All-Ukrainian Review of Folk Art (1999) in Kyiv. The works are stored in the Museum of Arts of the Kirovohrad Regional Council and the regional universal scientific library named after D.I.Chizhevskyi in the Kropyvnytskyi, Dobrovelychkiv local history museums, private collections in Ukraine and abroad. In 1991, TV journalists of the regional TV and radio company Lyudmyla Nikolaevska and Lilia Vereshchagina filmed the film "Temple of Good Hope of Padurska". In the 1980s, the artist got to know the artist Volodymyr Plitin, now a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, a teacher at the Art School named after O.O.Osmerkin in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, and at that time the head of the art department of the State University named after D.I.Chizhevskyi and Ella Yanchukova, who gave her professional advice, gave her paints, took an active part in the preparation of the first personal exhibitions.
    "Artist Nadia Padurska is undoubtedly a people's artist. Deeply national. Self-taught, she reached a high level of skill thanks to her fantastic diligence and incomparable artistic vision. Her artistic thinking absorbed the images embedded in the mentality of Ukrainians, their childhood, growing up in the fields, gardens, in the yards among green herbs, flowers, fruits, among animals, birds, the boundless space, in their deep memory of lack of freedom, hunger, the childish echo of war. Hence the peculiarity of the artist's pictorial language, this colorful weave, in which people, animals, and plants are united by a single exuberance of life. What an ancient echo in this weaving - paintings, carvings, embroideries, icon painting. Padurska recreates the world that exists in her from the Great Mother and which she feels and sees in herself and around her with the artist's eye. Born in a small town (Pomichna), without leaving since childhood (illness and loneliness tied her to the house and crutches), she lives herself and immerses us in the rich Pravitch world of the beauty of man and nature", - notes in the introduction articles for the album "Nadia Padurska. Love of life" (2015) librarian Ella Yanchukova, who is part of the author's team of the regional universal scientific library named after D.I.Chizhevsky for the preparation of a series of albums about compatriot artists was awarded in 2018 the regional award in the field of fine arts and art history named after Oleksandr Osmerkin in the nomination "art history and art history".
    And this is how art critic Olena Hurenko, a long-time teacher of the O.O.Osmerkin art school, characterizes the work of the original artist in the author's book "The Tree of Life of Nadiya Padurska: An Outline of the Life and Creative Path of the Artist", for the creation of which she became a laureate of the regional award in 2020 in in the field of fine arts and art history named after Oleksandr Osmerkin in the nomination "art history": "The craftswoman lives in her own world, and, as her work shows, this world is virtual, based both on knowledge of the realities of life and on devotion to the highest spiritual values of humanity , and on the reproduction of the state of mind. In her written confessions, Nadiya herself talks about what exactly her work represents: "A square canvas in a frame is my temple of Goodness, Dignity, and Truth." I feel human here. No one here will hurt me and will never betray me"... Nadiya Padurska's creativity has the truth of life, spiritual development and depth. She sees the way to great Love, Goodness, and Dignity through the everydayness of natural life. In the stream of everything usual, simple, everyday, where there is no place for the devalued, conflicting, pathetically sublime, she "stops the frames" of the selected best in the visible world and builds her own, mentioned by us, "virtual world". The whole idea of this world is that the dignity of the fate of every person, animal, even flower determines the Dignity of the World's fate... Her works demonstrate the artist's ability to positively influence the world through art, to maintain a connection between the past, present and future. Her art is a request to people to love all living things in this world, because without love for nature, a person becomes empty, embarrassed, remains alone, loses the meaning of life. This craftswoman appeared in the folk art of Ukraine at the right time. Her creativity rises to the level of a social phenomenon."
    The exposition of the current exhibition consists of more than sixty works by Nadiya Padurska, executed in 2020-2021 in various graphic techniques - watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, pencil, felt-tip pen, donated by the author to the funds of the Oleksandr Osmerkin Memorial Art Museum. The presented drawings are full of philosophical content, characterized by an extraordinary technique of execution and a peculiar interpretation of nature and man in it in a weave of plants and flowers, which make up an original artistic style, consonant with the work of the Ukrainian artist of naive art, master of decorative painting Kateryna Bilokur. They attract with a special warmth and humanity, because they reflect a world in which feelings and suffering, joy and sadness, the beauty of everyday life and extraordinary creative fantasy reign, a kind of Painted Paradise between the Heaven and the Earth.