Petrykivka, Dnipro region · UNESCO 2013

One brush.Two colours.Four generations.

A Petrykivka brush is loaded with two paints at once, and the stroke it lays carries both along its length. That stroke came down from Tetiana Pata to her student Vasyl Sokolenko, from him to Andrii Pikush, and from him, at the kitchen table, to his daughter Oksana.

Take the first stroke See the work

Andrii Pikush among his painted wooden trays

The family this comes from

The father built the Centre. The daughter carries the painting on.

Petrykivka is handed on from one pair of hands to the next. This site stands at the shortest distance from the tradition anyone can occupy: the kitchen table it was taught at.

People's Artist of UkraineAndrii Pikushb. 1950, Petrykivka

2025 National Taras Shevchenko Prize, decorative and applied art
2013 People's Artist of Ukraine
2009 Order of Merit, third class
1981 Honoured Master of Folk Art of Ukraine

Born in Petrykivka and taught by Vasyl Sokolenko, who was Tetiana Pata's pupil. In 1991 he organised the creative association «Petrykivka», with the folk masters holding it as co-owners, and since 1998 he has headed the Centre of Folk Art «Petrykivka».

His work has been to EXPO-83 in Montreal, to Warsaw, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Chicago and Philadelphia. Four of the people he trained became Honoured Masters, and three of them stood beside him on the 2025 Shevchenko Prize.

His whole record and his work →

Oksana Pikush singing in an embroidered blouse

The master who runs this siteOksana PikushPetrykivka → Canada

Born and raised in Petrykivka and taught the craft at home by her father and mother, Andrii and Maria Pikush, together with the master Ivan Dmytriuk. In a settlement where, as UNESCO puts it, every family has at least one practitioner, hers was the family the tradition ran through.

She paints interiors and murals and teaches children and adults. She brings handmade Petrykivka brushes to every class and hands them out herself. She also sings as a lyrical soprano — violin in Ukraine, classical voice at McGill.

NowPetrykivka painting at Folk Camp Canada
2019A six-week course at the St. Vladimir Institute, Toronto
2026A masterclass at UAFest, Carleton Place

Learn from her Her page

The mother is Maria Pikush, Honoured Master of Folk Art, head of the Tetiana Pata children’s art school in Petrykivka since 1995 and a laureate of the same 2025 Shevchenko Prize.

Painted by hand, on white paper

Start with the work itself

Every picture on this site is a real object photographed by someone who went to see it, kept with the credit its licence asks for. No generated ornament, anywhere.

Bird in a green wave

Wreath of tulips and dark blooms

Rose vazon on white

Blue and violet bouquet

Carpet of poppies and asters

Corner spray with grasses

Violet crown

Porcelain vase

Chest, «Blue flowers»

Plate, «August»

Poppies and cornflowers

Medallions

All thirty-nine →

The technical signature

The transition stroke

In Ukrainian: perekhidnyi mazok

The painter charges one brush with two pigments and pulls a single stroke. The colour changes inside the mark itself, so a petal turns from carmine to ochre without a second pass and without a line where they meet. Petrykivka painters work straight onto the surface with no drawing underneath, which is why this one move carries so much: there is nothing to correct it against.

The berries are set with a fingertip. The finest lines are drawn with a sharpened stem of marsh reed. The brushes are made by the painters themselves from soft animal hair bound to a stick — and every class Oksana Pikush teaches in Canada is painted with brushes carried over from Petrykivka.

The full glossary of named strokes →

Fingers holding a thin brush loaded with pink and yellow paint over white paper

Saucers of thick glossy paint in pink, crimson, green, yellow and blue on a white table

Handmade brushes with tips loaded in bright colours standing in a glass jar on a sunlit windowsill

The line

Four teachers, one unbroken handover

Petrykivka is transmitted by hand, from one person to the next. This platform is run from inside that transmission, at its current end.

01
Tetiana Pata
1884–1976
The teacher the school came from
She painted the walls and the paper sheets of Petrykivka before anyone called it a school, then taught the first formal class in the village. Nearly every master working today traces a teacher back to her.
Source ↗
02
Vasyl Sokolenko
1922–2018
Her student, who taught for seventy years
Pata's pupil, and the last of her direct students to still be working in the 2010s. He died at 96. Among the people he taught were Andrii Pikush and Maria Pikush.
Source ↗
03
Andrii Pikush
b. 1950
People's Artist of Ukraine · Shevchenko Prize 2025
Born in Petrykivka, taught by Sokolenko, and since 1991 the founder and chairman of the Centre of Folk Art “Petrykivka”. Merited Master of Folk Art in 1981, People's Artist of Ukraine in 2013, the Kateryna Bilokur Prize in 2009 and the National Taras Shevchenko Prize in 2025.
Source ↗
04
Oksana Pikush
Petrykivka → Canada
His daughter, taught at the kitchen table
Born and raised in Petrykivka and taught the craft at home by her parents, Andrii and Maria Pikush, together with the master Ivan Dmytriuk. She paints interiors and murals, and she teaches — bringing handmade Petrykivka brushes to every class she runs in Canada.
Source ↗

Every master →

A hand painting a single bright pink petal onto a sheet of white paper, caught mid-stroke

Painted straight onto the sheet, with nothing drawn underneath.

What this place does

Five jobs, in the order they matter

The history, the tools, the pigments and the named strokes, written with a source under every claim. The glossary gives each stroke its Ukrainian name and shows how the hand makes it.

Read the tradition →

The first stroke is free and takes twenty minutes. After that there are classes for children and adults, online and in person, run by a master born in Petrykivka.

Take the first stroke →

Interiors, murals, objects and brand work, painted by hand and signed by the person who painted them. Briefs, rights and lead times are settled in writing before anyone picks up a brush.

Start a brief →

The people taught by Pata's own students are in their eighties and nineties. The Living Archive films them painting and talking, in Ukrainian, with the footage kept open for museums, schools and researchers.

See the archive →

Patrons, sponsors, foundations and institutions fund the filming, the teaching and the open reference. Every tier says plainly what the money does and what comes back.

See how to help →

Four to look at closely

A panel, a frieze, a casket and a bauble

Pink panel
A vertical panel of layered pink blooms, mounted on dark wood.
Sunshine ND · CC BY-SA 4.0 · painter unrecorded

Ochre and green frieze
A horizontal band in the ochre-green range, close to what a painter would run along a wall.
Sunshine ND · CC BY-SA 4.0 · painter unrecorded

Casket with viburnum, 1980s
A wooden casket where the berry clusters show the finger technique clearly.
AnnaTroicka · CC BY-SA 3.0 · painter unrecorded

Painted Christmas baubles
The painting on a seasonal object, which is how most households meet it today.
Ksu Shmalko · CC BY-SA 4.0 · painter unrecorded

The part with a clock on it

The people taught by Pata’s own students are in their eighties

Vasyl Sokolenko, Pata’s pupil and Andrii Pikush’s teacher, worked until he died at 96. The generation he taught is the last that learned in the village before the factory, and much of what they know has never been written down or filmed. The Living Archive exists to record them painting and talking, in Ukrainian, while that is still possible.

See the archive Fund a recording

Vasyl Sokolenko at home in 2016, his own paintings on the wall behind him — Vasyl Sokolenko, 2016 · Igor Balashov, CC BY-SA 4.0

The whole shelf

Paper, wood, porcelain, glass and a village wall

Open the gallery →

Launch list

Follow the masters, the recordings and the classes

Mail goes out when a master’s page is published, when a recording is added to the archive, and when a class opens. Everything else stays off this list.

UNESCO inscribed Petrykivka decorative painting as a phenomenon of the Ukrainian ornamental folk art in December 2013, file 00893 — Ukraine’s first element on the Representative List. Open the entry ↗

One brush.Two colours.Four generations.

The father built the Centre. The daughter carries the painting on.

Start with the work itself

The transition stroke

Four teachers, one unbroken handover

Tetiana Pata

Vasyl Sokolenko

Andrii Pikush

Oksana Pikush

Five jobs, in the order they matter

Know what you are looking at

Learn it from the family it ran through

Commission a painted wall, object or collaboration

Record the masters while they are here

Stand behind it

A panel, a frieze, a casket and a bauble

The people taught by Pata’s own students are in their eighties

Paper, wood, porcelain, glass and a village wall

Follow the masters, the recordings and the classes

Write to Oksana