Olga Martynova

Olga is a Cherkasy master of embroidery and pysanka-making art – not an ordinary master but the head of Cherkasy center of folk masters. Together with them, Olga is reviving shirts and rushnyks made in local traditions and also the tradition of ornamenting pysankas.

Creative work

Having united a modest group of national embroidery masters whom she trained herself, Olga Martynova creates, makes and revives together with the group beautiful original works on the basis of traditional Charkasy embroidery. In particular, they include rushnyks traditional for the Dnipro middle-stream region. «Subbotiv’s», «Winter guelder-rose», «An oak leaf», «Hearty», «A green grove» and men’s shirts in which variations of newly interpreted traditional ornamental patterns obtain a modern look and decorative perfection: «Maxim», «Snow of centuries», «To the beloved», «the Milky Way».

Olga also revives the tradition of Ukrainian pysanka ornamenting. Her love and skills in creating pysankas the master inherited from her grandmother who descended from Lembky. So the first pysankas created by the master’s young hands, were of a Lembky kind. By now, the master has ornamented thousands of pysankas.