The masters · Petrikivka

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.

7 photographed

The faces the line runs through

Seven masters of the painting who have a freely licensed photograph on the public record. Each one was taken by a person who went to see them at home or in the studio, and the credit stays under the face.

Vasyl Sokolenko
Pata's pupil and the teacher of Andrii and Maria Pikush, photographed in 2016, two years before his death at 96.
Igor Balashov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Volodymyr Hlushchenko
Another of Sokolenko's pupils, in his workshop.
Igor Balashov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Hanna Samarska
Honoured Master of Folk Art of Ukraine.
Igor Balashov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Tetiana Harkava
Honoured Master and the author of the fullest illustrated manual of the painting.
Igor Balashov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Viktoriia Tymoshenko
At work in the studio.
Igor Balashov · CC BY-SA 4.0

Valentyna Nosenko
A master of the painting with her work.
Olga Loboda 0806 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Valentyna Karpets-Yermolaieva
Teaching the «Sun in the palm» circle; in 2025 a Shevchenko Prize laureate alongside Andrii and Maria Pikush.
Iryna Hordiieva (piramidaresource.dp.ua) · CC BY-SA 4.0

5 profiles

The handover, generation by generation

Vasyl Sokolenko, white-haired, sitting at his table in a striped shirt with his hands folded, large painted flower panels hung on the patterned carpet behind him — Vasyl Sokolenko at home, 2016 · Igor Balashov, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons ↗

One man in the middle of the list

Tetiana Pata taught Vasyl Sokolenko. Sokolenko taught Andrii and Maria Pikush, and from 1958 he was at the Petrykivka children’s art school, from the year it opened. Andrii and Maria taught their daughter Oksana at home. Five names below, and the line between the first and the last runs through this one man, who worked until he died at ninety-six.

His profile and his sources →

The teacher the school came from

Tetiana Pata painted in Petrykivka when the work still lived on cottage walls and on paper sheets pasted up and replaced through the year. She took the practice into a classroom: from 1936 she taught at the village school of decorative painting founded by Oleksandr Statyva, and the pupils who came through her hands carried the tradition for the rest of the century.

A strip of three Ukrposhta stamps: two panels of red Petrykivka flowers on either side of a photographic portrait of Tetiana Pata in a white headscarf, dated 1884 to 1976 — Ukrposhta, 2000 · public domain

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Pata's pupil, who taught for seventy years

Vasyl Sokolenko learned from Tetiana Pata and outlasted every other pupil of hers, working into the 2010s and dying at 96. He taught at the Petrykivka children's art school alongside Fedir Panko from its opening in 1958.

Vasyl Sokolenko in a striped shirt at his table, hands folded, large flower panels of his own pinned to the carpeted wall behind him — Photographed at home, 2016 · Igor Balashov, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Head of the Centre of Folk Art «Petrykivka»

Andrii Pikush was born in Petrykivka and learned the painting from Vasyl Sokolenko, Tetiana Pata's pupil. He worked at the Petrykivka painting factory in the early 1970s, and in 1991 he organised the creative association «Petrykivka», held by the folk masters themselves as co-owners. In 1998 that association and the experimental workshop merged into the Centre of Folk Art «Petrykivka», which he has headed since.

The family has yet to send a photograph, so this profile stands on its sources alone.

Read the profile →

Shevchenko Prize laureate · head of the Pata art school from 1995

Maria Pikush learned from Vasyl Sokolenko and taught at the Petrykivka children's art school. When the school became an independent institution in 1995 she took it over as its head. With Andrii Pikush she taught their daughter Oksana at home.

The family has yet to send a photograph, so this profile stands on its sources alone.

Read the profile →

Painter and teacher · murals and interiors

Oksana Pikush was born and raised in Petrykivka and learned the painting at home. Her teachers were her parents, Andrii Pikush, People's Artist of Ukraine, and Maria Pikush, Honoured Master of Folk Art, together with the master and teacher 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.

The family has yet to send a photograph, so this profile stands on its sources alone.

Read the profile →

What actually moves

A brush, a fingertip and a sharpened reed

The thing handed from one master to the next is physical, and it fits on a table.

The brush is made by the painter from soft animal hair bound to a stick. The berries are pressed on with a fingertip. The finest hairlines are drawn with a cut stem of marsh reed. Everyone on this page learned those three things standing next to somebody who already knew them.

A bundle of soft animal hair being bound with linen thread onto a thin wooden handle — The brush the painter makes · interpretation photograph

A fingertip pressing a round dot of carmine paint onto unbleached paper beside dots already placed in an arc — The berry set with a finger · interpretation photograph

A cut marsh reed stem sharpened to a point, lying on unbleached paper beside the single hairline stroke it has just drawn — The reed that draws the hairline · interpretation photograph

Joining the directory

How a master gets a page here

A page goes up when the master, or the family holding the rights, agrees to it in writing and supplies what should appear. Nobody is listed from a search result.

Works are shown with the author named, and the image rights recorded. Where a fact has two versions in the sources, the page says so rather than picking the flattering one.

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