According to biographic legend the artist Krasil Makar was born in 1889 in the village of Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha, Sverdlovsk Region. His parents were peasants. From 1901 to 1939 in his spare time from seasonal field labor, he worked as a dyer, painting peasant's log huts and household utensils. The works of that time hasn't survived. In 2017 Krasil Makar moved to Ekaterinburg and declared himself with the help of the first street art projects demonstrating a free interpretation of the Ural-Siberian house painting technique. In his recent practice the artist animates the lost tradition of "dyeing trade", developed in XVIII – XIX centuries. The Ural-Siberian painting on wood is a craft that did not become the widespread industry of the co-operative craft societies and large manufactures, and thus, it concerned its exclusive and hand-made character forever. Updating and adapting the practice of folk art have become the principal choice of Krasil Makar, who uses the expressive language of unique traditional craft.

In the paintings Krasil Makar uses spectacular technique "bleaching" when with a paintbrush he takes simultaneously two colors – the main and the white ones. This mode allows to achieve the vibrating transition from one color to another with the help of the only one brushstroke. The bleaching avivages and the black adscripts emphasize the power of basic pure colors: green, red, blue, yellow, dark brown. These specific visual quotes closely link Krasil Makar's works to house painting. Freedom and flexibility of the using of them let us consider the potential of development of traditional technology in modern context.

The flexible composition in the Ural-Siberian painting technique was organized either centrally or with the modules. Krasil Makar makes use of the improvisational capabilities of pictorial technique and lays out the geometry of the traditional pattern into general constituent elements. Finding themselves literally "scattered" across the surface and devoid of gravity, these elements are deformed and rearranged. The previously enclosed image space is moved apart, overcoming conditional compositional lines, as if under the action of centrifugal forces.

Krasil Makar's creative strategy is related to the personalization of the folk tradition, which often existed anonymously (or the names of the masters were gone). The contemporary artist "re-recording" the language of the painting, thereby brings the unique author's style into the technique itself.

Irina Kudryavtseva
Art historian