World of birds inspires

OLGA LIVSHIN

“Eva has always been creative,” said Eva’s mom, Natalya Kucherenko. “She always drew or made beautiful plaited key chains or sewed dresses for her dolls.” In Eva Dobrovolska’s case, “always” means 11 years – the age of the artist whose first solo exhibition, Eva’s Birds, opened on Oct. 3 and runs until Oct. 18 at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library.

Eva’s favorite subject is birds, colorful and curious. Like the artist herself, her painted birds are observing the mysterious world around them. Their eyes shine with fascination. Their little bodies pulse with the urge to take wing and explore.

Born in Ukraine, Eva emigrated with her family to Vancouver four years ago. Here, she encountered many new sights and concepts. One of the first unfamiliar sights was garage sales, she told the Independent. Considering herself sufficiently mature, she organized one herself. “I wanted to buy a gift for my mom,” she said, “but I didn’t want to ask her for money. I had many toys I didn’t need anymore, so I decided to sell them.”

Her first garage sale was a success, inspiring her to hold one the next year as well. Meanwhile, her mother bought her an art kit, including acrylic paints and a small canvas. “I didn’t know what to paint,” Eva remembered. “I love nature and I wanted to paint something reflecting my personality. And I wanted it to be beautiful.”

She settled on a bird – a blue jay – and enjoyed painting so much that she asked her mother to buy her more canvases. “I tried painting frogs and flowers, too, but I like birds best,” she said. “My mom is a web designer. She has many photos of birds, and I look at them. I look at the picture books, too, and I watch documentaries about nature to know how the birds look. I need to know the colors and layout of the feathers, but half of any of my pictures is my imagination.”

Her paintings multiplied rapidly, and Eva wanted to showcase them. “Once, we went for a walk in Stanley Park. We lived nearby, and I saw artists showing their paintings. I decided that when I had my next toy sale, I would display my paintings for everyone to see.”

She did, and the results were unexpected. “People liked my birds. They asked if I painted them myself and they asked if I would sell them, too. I said, yes, of course. They asked me how much, and I didn’t know what to say. I said, how much would you pay?”

She sold her first painting for $20. Overall, in the past couple of years, she has sold more than a dozen paintings, relying on her buyers’ discretion to give her a fair price. “One man returned to my sales next year with one of the first pictures I sold and asked me to sign it,” Eva said. Afterwards, she signed all her paintings.

“My mom sometimes gives me some hints: to make the legs longer or to turn a beak this way or that. She has an art education, she knows,” Eva confided. “Mom also made me a website [evasbirds.ca], so more people can see my paintings. She made me a Facebook page, too, and I already have 52 likes.”

One of the people who loved Eva’s paintings recommended them to the Waldman Library, and the library offered Eva her first show. “It was in June, and I stopped selling my paintings then. I needed them for the show,” she explained.

Eva is a Grade 6 student at Vancouver Talmud Torah. She reads books about magic and adventures, and watches documentaries about nature, especially on BBC Earth.

“She is very good at writing, too,” said her mother. “This year and last year, she won second place at the annual public speaking contest, organized by the Jewish Federation. She researched and wrote her speech herself, memorized and practised it to make it perfect. A speech needs to be three minutes exactly, or there are penalties. I’m so busy with my work and studies [for a master’s in engineering], I couldn’t even help her. But Eva is very independent. Anything she does, she tries to do her best.”

Kucherenko is extremely proud of her daughter and supportive of Eva’s endeavors. “I signed her up for Arts Umbrella this fall,” she said. “I took art classes when I was at school myself and I liked art very much but I didn’t make it my profession. I studied engineering instead. It made more sense in Ukraine. Now, I feel as if Eva’s creativity rubs off on me. I can’t enter an art shop without buying a brush or a tube of paint. I even started my own painting recently. And Eva, in the couple of years since she started painting birds, she’s become so much better.”

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

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