The secret of the color of Alexei Petrenko

Alexey Petrenko is a master of a picturesque landscape in the true and best sense of the word. Constantly improving in his craft, he brings it to a very high level. But the landscapes by Petrenko are not just beautiful images of nature. In each canvas, the artist puts his filial love for Mother Ukraine and does not tire of confessing to her this happy love.

The immense world of landscape

We see the artist’s homeland through his eyes, and our gaze stops on the “Sednev Yard”, then stretches into the distance when the “Late Autumn” comes to the Carpathians. We either squint from the blinding snow on “Frosty Day”, or we are fascinated by the autumn “Twilight” saturated with transparent moisture on the shore of Snov. Moreover, when the artist tells about his feelings, his mood is transmitted to us, regardless of the season and temperature of the street outside. Infinite blue “Gurzuf” gives us coolness and the reddish-brown “Sednev Autumn” warms us.

Alexey Petrenko. "Frosty Day". 2012.

In love with the pristine nature, Aleksey Petrenko is far from an idealistic desire to remove not quite beautiful things from the outside world, but he brings vanity beyond all his canvases, everything superficial and secondary - that distracts from the main idea. For example, “Holy Transfiguration Cathedral on Teremki-2”. Although it is located in a picturesque corner on the shore of a pond, but in fact is surrounded by dense buildings of a modern residential area. However, the artist decided not to transfer these buildings to the canvas.

Similarly, “Trekhsvyatitelskaya Street” by Petrenko looks cozy and completely out of date. It is even difficult to imagine that this “provincial” area is adjacent to the noisy Khreshchatyk and connects the luxurious European and Mikhailovsky Squares. The building of Novoaleksandrovsky church, the oldest Catholic church in Kiev, gives this street unconditional charm of antiquity.

Alexey Petrenko. "Trekhsvyatitelskaya Street". 2008.

The same applies to the courtyard of St. Sophia Cathedral, as well as a series of works devoted to the Florovsky Monastery (“The Shrine of the Florovsky Monastery”, “The Bell Tower of the Florovsky Monastery”, etc.).

In addition to rethinking natural colors and real landscapes, poetic fiction plays a tangible role in the work of Petrenko. He is looking for something permanent in the ordinary landscape, something with a hint of eternity, which he consciously emphasizes. For some reason, a frank discrepancy to the real situation does not surprise and does not raise questions, as if it could not be otherwise. For example, in the Sednev series it is a horse harnessed to a sleigh and a century-old forest outside the gates of the Lizogubovsky estate (T. G. Shevchenko lived in this manor in 1846-1847). We meet the same sled in the modern capital city in the Kiev cycle (Kievan Antiquity). And besides, both the first and the second canvases have solemn silence and the trees so sublimely calm that you want to slow down and enter the gate leading to the temple of your own heart, free from small everyday concerns and human fuss.

Alexey Petrenko. "Kievan Antiquity". 2008.

I made the Lizobug garden more monumental and majestic as it was, probably, in the days of Lizogubs, because today, mostly young trees grow here.

It was at Andrey Lizogub’s where Taras Shevchenko stayed when he came to Sednev. In 1846, the poet stayed here while working as part of the Archeographic Commission. In 1847, he visited Sednev for the second time, but for the purpose of rest. Although Shevchenko did not know how to rest; it was in Sednev where he wrote the poem “The Witch”, as well as the preface to the second edition of “Kobzar”.

Alexey Petrenko. "T. G. Shevchenko lived in this manor in 1846-1847". 2014.

Another theme that is present in Alexey Petrenko’s Sednev Series is the construction of sacred architecture, in particular, the St. George Church. The people call it Cossack, because according to legend, Cossacks of the Sednev regiment blessed their weapons in this church. By the way, it was in the interiors of the wooden three-branch St. George church in Sednev that Konstantin Ershov was shooting his “Viy”. A year earlier, the artist Alexey Petrenko first painted it on canvas.

Alexey Petrenko. "The Cossack Church". 2007.

«I remember this church when there were no domes yet; it was broken, destroyed. In the 1970s they began to restore it, but they didn’t finish what they had begun, so after a while the unique wooden church was again in disrepair. Only in 2007 it was completely restored».

The “Resurrection Church” is on another canvas by Alexey Petrenko, and not far from it, the old stone structure has been preserved from the time of the Lizogubs. It was this building that Taras Shevchenko painted when he visited Sednev in April in 1846.

During World War II, the building was partially destroyed. It was restored in 1967 and an outlet for draft beer was opened there. The outraged public achieved the closure of the beer house, after which the building was left without the owner and again fell into disrepair. Unknown people broke windows, torn down the doors and the floor. The second time the stone structure was restored only in 2001.

Alexey Petrenko drew him like this (the painting is called “The Lizogubs Kamenitsa”)

It was a very fierce winter, and there was snow to the waist. I came to the place, set up a sketchbook, but it literally drowned in the snow. I’m up above and the canvas is down below. Therefore, I kicked out a hole in a snowdrift, chose snow, and only then began to draw. It was terribly cold, I was frozen in the snow...

As for the motives of wildlife, the artist does not need to look for anything, he just has to open his soul and take a closer look at the surrounding reality to see: beauty is in everything.

For the last seven years, the artist leaves for the Carpathians every autumn, where he paints “Gates of the Holy Church”, “Kurnaya Hut”, the views of “Gavarechchina”, “Svirzh”, “Slavskoe”.

Alexey Petrenko. "The Dusty House". 2015.

It is very difficult to live and survive in Ukraine today. In such difficult conditions, as an artist, I chose for myself a society in which there is the luminosity of the soul and intentions. I mean the artistic plein air “Maxim”. I have already visited them six times and I want to say that it is a great honor for me to attend such events.

The Carpathians are waiting for the artist in the fall, and in winter, Aleksey Petrenko often goes on creative business trips to Sednev. Among the huge number of canvases painted in the Seversky Krai, the “Viburnum in the snow”, “Sednev. Winter”, “Winter in Sednev”, “Snow-covered garden”, and “House in Sednev” are especially successful. “Lizogub park” distinguishes especially. This picture is like an artist’s response to the reproaches of excessively detailed images (and such criticism addressed to him can sometimes be heard). The whole landscape, except for the bridge, lay down on the canvas in one day, and another was taken to the drawing of the old brickwork. Did the result justify the effort? Yes, of course, because one should just imagine that this bridge does not exist, and the picture loses all its charm.

But Alexey Andreevich was in Sednev not only in winter. In early spring, he saw the haystacks left in the fall, boats frozen tightly into the ice on the Snov shore. The picture may seem sad, but this is only at first glance, since the “March Shadows” on the old snow although still winter-like long, but become shorter day after day.

Alexey Petrenko. "March shadows". 2008.

The picture “March Day” is amazingly alive, as if warmed by the earth, waking up from a long winter sleep. You want to breathe this fresh March air with full breastfeeding, to feel the very movement of life, when Snov will spill awakened by spring warmth. (“Magpies”). Amazing, light-giving matter filling everything around with a mystery of muted chromatic tones is in the canvases of the artist.

Alexey Petrenko. "Magpies". 2002.

And here is the “Sednev Summer”. The rain has just stopped, not all the clouds have disappeared over the horizon, and the wet, washed world is already shining with thousands of highlights. A crooked wooden shed, an old willow with a peeled bark, dark green lily pads on a shaky surface of the water - Petrenko knows that all this can be very beautiful. This beauty does not need to be searched somewhere in other worlds. Everything is here in Ukraine, right at hand, and not even at hand, but in one’s own heart.

Portrait genre and still life

Besides the fact that Alexey Petrenko is a talented landscape painter, he is also a master of portraiture. First of all, the graphic works of the artist (“Portrait of Nikolai Andreevich”, numerous black-and-white sketches in which the dramatic tension of elderly people’s emotions is strenthened with achromatic palette) draws attention.

The lively, dynamic images of his friends: Peter Pecherny, Vladimir Kovtunenko, Boris Kovalenko, Ivan Donich, teacher Tatyana Ivanovna Zakharchenko are among the best pictorial portraits of the artist. In these faces and figures there is no posturing, no vanity. The artist’s gazing, studying look penetrates to the very essence of a person’s character, his inner world.

Alexey Petrenko. "Portrait of Pechorny PP". 1997.

 As for still lifes, Petrenko has few of them, but each has a pronounced national character (“In the pantry”, “Violin and Rushnyk”, “Still Life with a Spinning Wheel”). Simple and familiar thanks to the Ukrainian classic paintings become part of our present life and ourselves, when stopping at the picture by Petrenko, we catch this echo of ancestors, the age-old memory of the people.

Alexey Petrenko. "Still Life with a Spinning Wheel". 2012.