Галина Стельмащук • Марія Гарасовська-Дачишин

136 the beauty of nature is conveyed in her paintings. She painted them boldly, with certainty and great skill, as if it was made in one breath. One of Maria’s favorites is the sunflower, the national flower of Ukraine. Each sunflower painting has a different characterization. Mika’s talent is greatly revealed in her use of refined colours, shades and nuances that naturally combine in harmony. While traveling across the USA, Maria mainly painted landscapes. She created hundreds of oils, tempera or water-colour paintings of landscapes. Some feel like you can scoop water from a lake in the Colorado Mountains with your hands. She is capable of grasping moments like the speed of the water stream or wind current. She catches the twinkling of the pond with its quiet lapping of water and pretty willows reflected on the mirror surface of water. You may hear the brook babble. She even painted in the high peaks of the Colorado Mountains, where the wind once blew her canvas stretcher off the easel. Yet she continued on…carpe diem. She talks to God, prays and records her wonderful prayer in art.The horizons are so boundless, in their blue colour Mika sees her homeland’s Carpathian Mountains. A beautiful series of landscapes in Wisconsin is notable for its expressive colours. While she painted the landscapes: Stubble Fields, River, Fields, Forest, My Prayer and Weeds all from nature in Wisconsin USA, a viewer gets the glimpses of the beloved Ukrainian homeland, which Maria couldn’t forget during her whole lifetime. During her visits toColorado the artist paintedmany sites with strong and sweeping strokes. All of her Colorado works were large canvases, like “Landscape”, “Red Rocks Amphitheatre” (both 1960). Artist friend Ivan Keyvan estimates that Maria painted over 75 landscapes across America. Neither frost, snow-drifts or snow storms could stop her from painting a scene in which she was interested. Though her arms and fingers were nearly frozen, she painted “Bear Lake” with the incredible tones of white snow, “Pikes Peak” and “Evergreen Mountain”, which reminded her of the native Carpathians. Additionally, the artist painted a lot more landscapes in other countries. Dozens of canvases were painted in Canada, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine. Mika liked Zagreb, Yugoslavia because it reminded her of her youth in Krakow and Lviv. Four of the artist’s landscapes are left in Yugoslavia, one in Deviatiny, one in Banja Luka and two