PICTURE FOR HUMAN Today, unfortunately we call everything "art" - from a cubed car taken from the junkyard to a lock of the artist's hair sent by mail. I am not sure that you would like to hang this on your bedroom wall. Many modern fine art schools have a low regard for drawing skill. However, Taras Boychuk can draw in traditional styles and is not afraid of showing it. Boychuk's art is mainly inspired by the Carpathian Mountains. His cultural roots are Carpathian - like an ancient mountaineer of Carpathia, he brings his Slavic heritage to Europe. Now, in the 21st century, in almost every Carpathian household people weave woolen rugs (kilims) in ways very similar to the weavings of American Indians, embroider hundreds of ornaments onto shirts sewn from home woven linen cloth and, before Easter, write Easter eggs - the ritual magic eggs that every village decorates differently. Even today, highlanders wear colorful traditional costumes while attending mass on special holidays. The Carpathian Mountains in the 21st century are still a mysterious land full of riddles. The world knows the Carpathians from Bram Stoker's mythological novel Dracula or Murnau's film on Dracula. The Lviv Historical Archive even today stores the letters of a real Dracula. The area's mystery continues: in 1989, during the First Ukrainian Rock Festival, the local "molfar-clouder" - a type of Carpathian weather-wizard - called to musicians: "Play guys, play strongly, I am almost out of my power to keep away these clouds!" Thunderstorms were over the entire Bukovyna region, but over the stadium was sunshine that lasted till festival's end. From ancient times, the local people of Carpathia have received from their women a deep primordial sense of color. This sensibility has also inspired Taras Boychuk. While using strong, active colors he at the same time combines them harmonically. His paintings range widely: from his often-used red-toned canvases he can readily switch to ascetic, almost monochromatic winter landscapes. "We should apologize for daring to speak about painting,"Paul Valery once said. But I will nonetheless offer a few sentences. Boychuk's paintings live their own lives. They change from being like easy and quiet streams, as in his "Innsbruck Flowers" and "Hunter Creek," to boiling and blasting torrents as in his "Maple" or "Hunter Fall." Take a close look and you will discern his influences: an early excitement with Van Gogh hasn't passed away without a trace, but is transformed in his current art. Most subjects come to Boychuk from the mountains. From boundless landscapes with high skies, he can switch to a close view of his surroundings and finds inspiration in stems of grass, stones, bushes, and tree trunks blasted by mountain storms. Since the mountains are closer to the heavens, in them the smallest piece appears perfectly composed by the Greatest Artist. As God creates the World, it is immensely various and unrestricted. The person with artistic talent has a mission to show things that people because of their daily preoccupations not notice. Boychuk's responses to the world are seen in his art. His reaction to September 11 can be seen in his "Landscape with White Stones." His concern for nature appears in another piece where an iron wheel creates a message of anxiety for nature, threatened by technology. Boychuk's red leaves of fern are triumphal - no less than snow-bounded mountain ranges. The image of a single dried tree forgotten somewhere in the Carpathians is elevated to the grade of monument. And everywhere humans can feel the lyrical warmth of the art, an almost religious admiration of Nature - God's Creation. Everyone will find something special here, something close to their own heart. Dr. Kost Pysiazhnyj, member of ICOMOS