Галина Стельмащук • Марія Гарасовська-Дачишин

129 Most of the time, her published newspaper or magazine articles were about art events, exhibitions and plein airs concerning the part of the world where Mika was at the moment. The first art critic who wrote about Maria Harasowska-Daczyszyn’s creative activity in Ukraine was Yevstakhiya Shymchuk. Her article was published in the foreign press in 1952. In the book “Ukrainian Artists In The World-Data On The History Of 20th Century Art” Halyna Stelmachshuk wrote about Maria’s life as a painter, graphic artist and teacher. This was featured in the section about Ukrainian Artists in Rome and features an image of one of her portraits. Although Mika is an artist of Ukrainian origin, she is better known in the USA and Canada. The artist’s paintings have a large subject range. She painted portraits, icons, landscapes, flowers, still life, scenes of everyday life and many subjects of Ukrainian folklore. She painted small book sized icons and large format landscapes. The artist was a master of painting with oils on canvas, watercolors and tempera on board. She created graphic art, book designs, playbill designs, postcard and magazine cover designs. She also worked as a scene-painter. Maria Harasowska- Daczyszyn was a member of the Association of the Independent Ukrainian Artists (АIUA) in the city of Lviv, of the Association of the Ukrainian Artists of America (AUAA), and a member of various art unions in the USA. She was a good organizer, capable of creating many art exhibitions that reached a wide public of art lovers. Some of her notable exhibitions were in Ukraine (1938, 1941, 1942), in Poland (1942), in Germany (1947), Paris,France 1976 and many more since 1950 in the USA and Canada. Lidiya Burachynska, a well-known art critic among the Ukrainian community, journalist, leader of the Ukrainian Women’s movement in the USA mentioned Mika’s “belief in herself and the hardships which she had to overcome led her to success. They strengthened her will to create.” Mika extensively traveled to many of the US states and Europe, where she found art subjects and compositions. Maria Harasowska-Daczyszyn was born in 1911 in the town of Stariy Sambir. Her father StanislawHarasowsky was a priest and came from a familywithmany generations of priests before him. Father Stanislaw was the town priest, and later moved to the village Balychi near