The Balance

How difficult is to find inner balance in our turbulent times? You have to learn to see the balance from the outside!

"All my artistic life, I see non-trivial connections of opposites, which, at first glance, do not match, however upon deeper look, everything is connected and combined: difficult life dramas are combined with children's joys; activity with adaptation; seriousness with irony; black with white and with all the incredibly diverse spectrum of colors, information, emotions, and events that swirl around us in an endless stream.

There was a moment of life that struck me so deeply as that I decided to convey it in a stylized symbolic picture.

March, 2022. Slovakia. My son Robert and I stood in a long line on the outskirts of Bratislava to receive refugee shelter. There was a bulky and gray police building, thousands of desperate Ukrainian women in a foreign land and many children clinging to their mothers.

At the same time, a new character appears on this dramatic scene of life - a local Slovak girl, a graduate of a circus school. She attractively laid out circus equipment on the green lawn (it's spring!) near the police. What started there! Children ran to her with joy and excitement looking at all sorts of interesting things. My son immediately got into the fun and started showing the kids how to make huge bubbles!

Light and transparent yet rainbow shimmering bubbles slowly rose above the endless line of refugee mothers, above all of us...  We stood in awe watching this attraction.  In the most difficult conditions there were our children who gave us a psychological support needed by adding the necessary opposite energy - children's pure Joy.

Everything seen, heard, experienced in its opposites gives us a sense of stability, balance of life in dynamics. That is why the central position in the picture is our planet Earth – a true example of constant movement in a balance with the cosmic rhythms of the universe."

The mural was painted in the Lobby Hall of the Youth Center in town Zhmerynka by the joint efforts of active school children under the leadership of Tetiana Shevchenko.

Sincere thanks to Alevtyna Litvin, Sofia Lavrenchuk, Arina Levinska, Valeria Kopchuk, Alina Limankovska,

Dumanska Victoria, Shagan Alina and Dasha Sorokopud.

It was an incredibly creative and proactive youth team!

Together we are a huge balanced force of opposites!