Hutsul Folk Artists

Until the Hutsul folk art website is operational, I will showcase a different artist each month. This month’s artist is renowned wood carver Mykola Mykolayovych Strynadyuk of Kosiv.

Born in Kosiv in 1962, he graduated from Kosiv’s Technical School of Folk Artistic Handcrafts (now: Ukraine State Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts) in 1981 as “an Artist Master in wood processing.” Between 1981 and 1994 when he became self-employed, Mykola Mykolayovych produced “artistic items” for several State artisans’ guilds.

Although not a member himself, Mykola Mykolayovych represented the National Artists Union of Ukraine in 2002 in both Ivano-Frankivsk and Kyiv in a show entitled Exhibition of Sacred Art: Traditions Today and in 2003 in Sopot, Poland in the17th Annual Festival of Ukrainian Culture.

Using woods native to the area such as cherry, walnut and oak, Mykola Mykolayovych makes both decorative and utilitarian objects ranging from small crosses to entire wall units. An incomplete list of his work includes decorative plates such as those shown, picture frames, book ends, jewelry boxes, salt boxes, chess sets, bed frames and doors. No two items are ever the same. If you yearn to have something beautiful and it can be made from wood, Mykola Mykolayovych can make it.

Until the Hutsul Folk Art website it operational, please contact Mykola Mykolayovych at +380 3478-21351

Since I find it impossible to depict the work done by this talented artisan, I have let photographs of his work speak for me.