MRIJA studio completes its Petrykivka painting course: from first brushstrokes to original magnets

The Ukrainian Arts Studio MRIJA (Ukraina Kunstide Stuudio Mrija MTÜ) has completed a three-day course in Petrykivka decorative painting. The final session took place on 7 November in Tallinn.

Over three meetings, participants progressed from their first attempts at the traditional "seed" stroke to their own compositions: they practised classic brushstrokes, studied colour and colour combinations, and in the final session painted original magnets.

Summing up the course, the studio points to contemporary approaches in arts education, in particular Harvard's Project Zero research project and its Arts PROPEL strand. In this view, art is not just about producing a finished piece but a cycle of three processes: production (practising strokes and colour), perception (learning to look at the work of masters and peers) and reflection (assessing one's own result and finding the next step).

Another approach from the same researchers is Artful Thinking, with its well-known routine See, Think, Wonder. It teaches people to separate what they actually see from how they interpret it, and to ask questions. As the studio notes, art does not automatically make anyone better at maths, but it develops attention to detail and the ability to analyse, interpret and argue — skills that are useful in any field.

The painted magnets will now decorate participants' homes, and, in the organisers' words, the course taught them "to see more, think more deeply and wonder at the world around us".

Source: MRIJA studio post on Facebook. Photo: MRIJA studio.