It snowed all night I was a little scared How I survive winter without a coat. And in the morning it turned out that all night White asters fell from the sky to the ground. Because it's summer now...

    Borys Eghiazaryan (June 2023): "First of all, I thank all Americans and President Biden for the great support that Ukraine has received. 

    I also have a request to the American people. A request from me personally as an artist, as a representative of the artistic community, and as a Ukrainian politician (I am active in politics): We are asking you to provide Ukraine with airplanes! We need airplanes so that the war does not last so long, so that the war is not so cruel, so that our mothers, children, soldiers, civilians do not die... so that it stops as soon as possible. Because airplanes mean the lives of our people!

    I appeal to Americans who come to the exhibition: Convey to President Biden and their representatives my appeal about our great need for airplanes! And let them not be afraid that we will use these planes to bomb russia, no! We will use these planes to drive them out of Ukraine. If America gives us airplanes, other countries will be ready to give us airplanes. 

    Let the American authorities help us so that we can win during this year. And it will be our common victory”.

    Maestro Borys Eghiazaryan, a Ukrainian artist who was born and raised in Armenia, is one of the established artists of Ukraine and we are honored to present his watercolors and oil painting at our exhibitions. A movie about his work, "The Gardens of Borys Eghiazarian," begins with his words: "Every evening ask God for forgiveness as if it were your last day. And create every day as if you had eternity in front of you."

    We met under rather difficult circumstances. It was 2014, as the massacres on the Maidan had begun in Ukraine. Serhiy Nigoyan, a bright young Ukrainian-Armenian with a childlike face, was exclaiming the poems of the famous Ukrainian poet, Shevchenko, while staying on the barricades in Kyiv. 

    Serhiy Nigoyan was shot because the enemy loves symbolic killings: exterminating the youth and erasing the nation’s culture so that no more Ukrainian poems could be heard. Mr. Eghiazaryan wrote a farewell message and supported the boy's family as much as he could.

    I asked Borys Eghiazaryan if I could publish this farewell note in the Ukrainian Christian newspaper Nasha Vira and received permission. This is how our communication began. I listened to interviews with the artist, admired his courage, wisdom and ability to find a home in a new land and the necessity to be generous for good. Following the work of Borys Eghiazaryan, I saw the miracle of creating Ukrainian art with an Armenian heart. Here is what the current head of the Ukrainian PEN Club, A. Kurkov, writes about Borys Eghiazaryan: "...Borys has been writing almost all his life. More often with a brush and paints, less often with a pen. But either with pen on paper or paints on canvas, he writes the same stories − stories about his world, about the past of this world, and about its present. As Borys's paintings are filled with romantic and biblical symbolism, his literary works are more concrete and, despite their laconicism, convey a more complex meaning of the same micro-universe, where the history of an entire nation becomes the history of one person and vice versa.

    In 1988, the national liberation movement began in Armenia. Like many other members of the young creative elite, Borys put aside his personal plans and hopes as well as his brushes and canvas and entered politics. Together with like-minded people, he prepared his homeland for independence and participated in the work of the Karabakh Committee. Together with other activists and members of the committee, he was arrested and thrown into prison. He went through the circles of hell but did not break... Even when his studio with almost all the work he had written over fifteen years of his life was burned in Yerevan, he stayed strong.

    The Soviet Union was falling apart. Suddenly, prisons began to open their doors. He was released just as the military confrontation with the already demoralized but still strong Soviet Army began. It was also the beginning of the civil war between the past and the future.
 

    Borys, as a commander, defended the border with volunteers from his mountain village of Aparan. The artist did not pick up a brush for more than three years. When he returned to the studio, he could not draw. And then he created these short stories. By returning to his childhood through writing, he returned to life and creativity. 

   That happened a long time ago in another country. In his other country. Now this other country, his native Armenia, is in his heart and memory. He became a Ukrainian artist from Kyiv with a quarter-century of experience, a philosopher, poet, writer, without whose creative voice the world of Ukrainian culture would be incomplete. It is thanks to this "otherness" in his heart that he is able to surprise us with his paintings, his thoughts and actions, his faith in   goodness and in people, and with his short stories in which there is more poetry than prose." Andriy Kurkov (From the preface to the book: Borys Eghiazaryan − Forty Springs. Poems and Stories. Lviv, Staryi Lev Publishing House, 2018. - 104 p.)

    Borys Eghiazaryan was very kind to give us the opportunity for personal communication and when asked which museums exhibit his work: "First of all, and most importantly, one work that is very dear to me is in the White House Museum in America. The former Ukrainian ambassador to America presented this work to President Biden's assistant. Eventually, the painting became the property of the White House Museum. Many of my paintings are in museums in France, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy. Very interesting large artworks belong to the collections of the National Museum of Armenia, the National Museum of Ukraine, and are presented in the Kyiv Art Gallery. A large exhibition took place in Italy (2023), and there have been many successful exhibitions in France, Armenia and the United States (including New York)."