Ukraine kids’ art healing work from war zone goes on display

They paint the blood red skies above them, and the raggedy flowers still growing in the battered shells of their war-bombed homes.

The pain of war is there for all to see in simple drawings made by the children of Ukraine.

Flowers For Grandma, painstakingly painted using just a single finger by 11-year-old Veronika tells the story of how her entire family were blown to pieces two years ago when a Russian tank fired a shell into their home in Vuhledar, killing her father, grandmother and her aunt and uncle.

Flowers For Grandma by Veronica, 11, painted with one finger after she lost her thumb when her house was hit by a Russian shell.

Rescued from the rubble that was once her home, Veronika has been left with a paralysed arm. She lost her thumb and is blind in one eye.

As she recovered from extensive injuries, traumatised Veronika spent her days painting as she recuperated in a Kyiv hospital until Russian forces decided to bomb that too.

Veronika, 11, who painted Flowers for Grandma.

Eight-year-old Liliia Martynenko, from the besieged town of Pokrovsk, painted a Guardian Motanka, the traditional Ukrainian symbol of goodness and hope as her father serves as an artillery man on the frontline. Another painting shows red skies as bombs rain down on her home town.

Liliia Martynenko and her Sky picture with Yustyna Pavliuk.

Little Kostya’s father Oleksandr was captured at the Mariupol steelworks and held captive for two and a half years before he was finally reunited with his son and wife Yuliia in October as part of a prisoner exchange programme.

His artwork shows soldiers and tanks on the streets where he once lived and played football. Painting allows the children of war to express their innermost fears and feelings, the stark images are now part of a unique exhibition where poignant portraits of crying teddy bears replace rainbows and happier carefree days.

Nataliia Pavliuk, an art lecturer at Lviv Polytechnic University in Ukraine, and her daughter Yustyna, a student in Architectural Design, are the inspiration for the project which has helped hundreds of traumatised children in hospitals, orphanages, and bomb shelters, encouraging them to paint as war rages around them.

She said: “We’ve been helping children from all over Ukraine. By coming to art healing classes, they experience respite from the horrors of war.”

The brave mother and daughter will be presenting the exhibition of the art at Holyrood, along with David Elley, an American who regularly travels to the Ukraine to help displaced families.

David was so moved by the incredible art, along with other volunteers from the Sunflower Dreams Project he helps raise funds for the programme taking the Little Hope Gallery exhibition around the world, from Seattle to Chicago, Denmark to Vienna.

He said: “People cannot fail to be moved by these images which come straight from the hearts of children, despite everything they have endured and witnessed.”

The exhibition runs from January 30 at Holyrood, and Scottish Conservative Shadow Education Minister Miles Briggs said: “These heartbreaking paintings give us unique insight into the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of children whose lives have been torn apart, but their resilience and talent continue to shine.”