By Azad Karimi
Through this training, I slowly develop a feeling for my own line work. This is how I create my illustrations for children.
Interview
German PainterHeike Michaela Sowinski
By Azad Karimi
Twenty days have passed since the beginning of the Ukrainian war.
In the early days of Putin's aggression against Ukraine, I wrote about the Ukrainian national poet Vasyl Symonenko. He was a patriotic and committed poet who died at the age of twenty-eight.
The Ukrainian National Resistance, led by Mr. Zelinsky, inspired the people of the world, and many historical and nostalgic monuments in different parts of the world were re-discovered in the world's public opinion. For example, the famous poem The Kurdish Brother by Vasyl Symonenko.
But why I write this again in more detail in this introduction goes back to the just and liberal character of the German painter Ms.Heike Michaela Sowinski.
Of course, I insisted that she send me her answers because I asked her last year to participate in my interview project. Fortunately, they accepted and sent me the following text. Of course, my other reason for choosing Mr. Symonenko in this introduction goes back to the publication of his poem in West Germany. So in this interview, I would like to mention the German magazine Suchistn during the Cold War.
Another interesting point is that the fate of the Iraqi Kurds and March is complicated.
The leader of the Iraqi Kurdish revolution, General Mustafa Barzani, was born in March and died in March. In March, the right of autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan was recognized. In March, the Algerian agreement against the Iraqi Kurds was signed between Iran and Iraq; in March, the great Ukrainian poet Simonenko wrote the famous poem of his Kurdish brother, and in March, the Kurdish uprising in Iraq led to the creation of a no-fly zone. And of course, the biggest national celebration of the Kurds in the world, Nawroz, is also held in March.
Anyway, dear Heike, made me to a review of a series of events related to the Kurds, Ukrainians, and Germans, and I take this opportunity to offer the best congratulations on the occasion of Nawroz, Spring, and the resurrection of nature to all the people of the world. Wishing the best spring to all the readers of this interview.
Heike is an amazing painter and a sublime human being. She calls herself a grandmother! Yes, she is the grandmother of her grandchildren, but she is a great artist and a just and free human being. She is a friend of the heroic people of Ukraine. I wish her success and happiness.
Here is a text I took from Wikipedia and edited and dedicated to the German people. This is a gift from the people of Kurdistan and the people of Ukraine in honor of the editor of Suchistn magazine in West Germany in March 1965:
Kurds'komu bratovi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Kurds'komu bratovi" (Ukrainian: Курдському братові. To a Kurdish Brother) is an aesopian poem written by Ukrainian Vasyl Symonenko in March 1963 and disseminated clandestinely in samizdat until 1965 when it appeared posthumously in the German journal Suchasnist. "Kurds'komu bratovi" has been described as one of Symonenko's greatest works and made Symonenko a national hero and one of the most important figures in Ukrainian literature. The poem appeared during the height of the First Iraqi-Kurdish War in which the Soviet Union was involved.
In 1968, an agricultural college lecturer named Mykola Kots was sentenced to seven years in camp and five years in exile after disseminating copies of the poem wherein the word 'Kurd' was replaced with 'Ukrainian'.
The poem has six stanzas and begins with a description of chauvinists invading the land of the Kurds. In the first four stanzas, Symonenko addresses a Kurdish friend and encourages him to fight the invader and oppressor who aims at eradicating the Kurdish language and the Kurdish people. By the end of the fourth stanza, Symonenko introduces the word 'our' and asserts that chauvinism and its deceits are the worst foes of both Kurds and Ukrainians.
Svitlana Kobets of the University of Toronto argues that the poem became "a symbol of national resurrection and resistance to Soviet oppression". When the poem was secretly disseminated, it became associated with the aspirations to liberate Ukraine from the Soviet Union, and Symonenko's take on the Kurdish liberation movement gave the Ukrainian liberation movement a universal meaning. Symonenko himself asserted that historical parallels were needed because the common denominator was chauvinism, and argued that Ukrainians would end up in the same situation as the Kurds regarding statelessness if they did not fight the Soviet regime.
Nataliya Romanova points out the similarities between the writing in "Kurds'komu bratovi" with the poem "Kavkaz" (Кавказ) by Taras Shevchenko, arguing that by using Shevchenko as a proto text (source text), Symonenko echoed the sentiments of resistance against Russian rule which were prevalent in the works of Shevchenko. The inspiration is seen at the first stanza:
Into the fragrant valleys, scarred and wounded,
Comes the invader, hungry chauvinism.
Thank you!
Østland-Norway
..............................................................
I am a 74-year-old grandmother. My name is Heike Michaela Sowinski. Paintings and graphics have always been the food for my eyes. But I have never been active myself since I was given the task to draw an ashtray at the age of 7.
I could sculpt figures out of clay (including ashtrays), but I could not put them in perspective on a flat sheet of paper.
Since that time, I was considered unworthy of giving drawing lessons.
So I contented myself with repainting Mickey Mouse until I got too old for that.
At the age of 70, my hands had become shaky in the meantime, I tried it again on my own. On the computer.
I delved into the workings of a vector graphics program and with much effort started handling lines and nodes.
I still have problems with perspective, but try to draw it out by using light and dark shades. I learn every day, study the work of professionals, copy them also with the help of vector lines.
Through this training, I slowly develop a feeling for my own line work. This is how I create my illustrations for children.
The side effect is also that your own grandchildren see that as an old person you can still struggle with new challenges.
