Mariya Ivanyshyn

Maria is a well-known pysankar from Lviv, from Ivano-Frankivsk by origin. She investigates pysankas from the entire region and reproduces them. Especially she likes Gutsul ones. Besides, she is interested in weaving on looms, straw weaving and motanka-dolls.

Creative work

Maria is convinced that “water, fire and bee wax together with a series of symbols give strength of an obereg to pysankas”.

Maria likes to ornament Gutsul pysankas in which yellow-orange, red, purple and brown colors prevail. As a basis, she often takes ornaments form the book by Volodymyr Shukhevych called “Gutsul area”, issued way back in 1904 in three volumes. This author in his work included the pysanka descriptions and tables with pictures for colored ornaments and patterns for black-and-white ones (18 of the colored and 36 of the black-and-white ones).

The master also copies Prycarpattya (Pokuttya) pysankas and investigates Boykiv patterns.
She is also interested in weaving (gobelins), Christmas decorations from straw (straw spiders) and motanka-dolls; she also holds master-classes in these ancient crafts.