Over the course of my career, I was required to get involved in a wide range of activities, but only within the limits of my profession: creating new clothes, taking part in professional exhibitions of fashion collections in my own country and abroad, designing accessories for apparel and footwear, and working with fonts. I had occasion to design exhibition stands, be a set designer at the theatre, a designer of knitwear, a teacher, the head of a production department, and even an operator of various machine tools and apparatus for bringing my ideas to life, and so on. Yet whenever I was asked by an employer, when applying for a new job, whether I knew how to do this work, I always replied confidently: yes, I can do it, even though I had never done it before in my life.

When I entered each new phase of my career, I would start almost from scratch and end up achieving pretty good results in a variety of fields. As a result, I learned the most important thing of all: people can learn to do anything at all, as long as they have a goal and the requisite desire. Sometimes the goal is not immediately clear, and only emerges during the working process.

There were plenty of failures along the way, of course, but this was the very thing that prompted my tireless search for success.

After moving from Lvov (in Western Ukraine) to work in the Netherlands, and with a large amount of professional experience under my belt already, I decided to take up a job in Amsterdam at a puppet theatre. I began creating and manufacturing costumes for operas set in the 15th and 16th centuries: Mozart's ‘The Magic Flute’, ‘Doctor Faustus’ and others. I let my imagination run wild and made the props for the performances using materials that I had never worked with before. I also created models for the new shows. All of this new activity was so appealing to me that using my imagination became the norm, whatever activity I was engaged in.

Over the next few years at the theatre, I often thought about what I would do next. I already knew that I didn't want to stay in my chosen profession. What, then, was I going to do?

As it turned out, I had plenty of ideas. I hesitantly set my mind on one idea in particular: to try drawing again, after an interval of more than 30 years. I had made up my mind, and was incredibly surprised by how much I could do and the feeling I still had for this work.

After analysing this unexpected discovery of my skills, I came to the conclusion that we pick up a great deal of knowledge without even noticing it as we go through life. Whether we are conscious of it or not, everything we see around us—the natural world, its colours, unusual shapes, the impressions made on us by cities, exhibitions, museums, the various people we meet and much else besides—all this is stored in our memory, waiting for an opportunity to make itself manifest in some new aspect of our activity.

I went to studios and signed up for classes, trying various painting techniques and materials, but I felt a constant sense of dissatisfaction. As time went by, I began to understand the reason. In my profession I had a certain amount of basic knowledge, but in this activity I did not.

It so happened that my son came to my aid as the result of an idea he had. He decided to set up the Glagoslav publishing house and to publish books by writers from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in translation, for the English-speaking world, and later in Dutch as well, and I decided to design the covers for the books. What a remarkable feeling it was to see the first book featuring a cover designed by me—and, more importantly, to see that people liked it.

Without a second thought, I threw myself into graphic design, and was again required to master something new.

Thus it was that I found out that the Internet is packed full of useful information: educational films, master-classes by famous artists, drawing teachers, and a large number of galleries containing very interesting artworks by artists working with various techniques. I simply couldn’t help but learn new skills and find new interests.
After reviewing and collecting a vast amount of material, I decided to do the illustrations for ‘Ukrainian Fairy-tales’ and to create my drawings using a technique that I was slowly but surely mastering.

Given that I had spent a lot of time working with fabrics in my career, I came to realise something: I was not a painter; instead, my preference was for decorative art, and this was expressed in the ideas and lines of my drawings.

Each stage of my life had taught me a great deal, but I had now become aware of the most important thing of all: everything in this world is interconnected, and the human imagination, like so much else, is dependent on our state of mind. And yet our lives are wholly subject to various external events—usually negative ones—which either lift our mood or sink our spirits.

Once again, I sought a solution in books.

I had had some literature about spiritual matters and reflection lying around on the shelves of my small bookcase for some time. These books, together with my increasingly frequent visits to the Our Lady of All Protection convent in Bussy-en-Othe, France, were the source of my inspiration. The profound services there, with the extraordinarily melodic and penetrating singing of the nuns, the beautifully painted walls of the church, the spiritual warmth of the nuns and the light that seems to pour out of them through their silent attentiveness, kindness, warmth, care and, at times, their ability to say the right thing at the right time, gave a huge boost to my ideas and to my imagination. The fields, meadows and woods which surround the monastery seemed to inspire me, filling me with fresh thoughts and ideas. This particular place became the most powerful source of creativity I had ever known.

When I returned home, however, it was a group of books of a different kind that formed my next source of ideas: the small library of albums and books I had collected about decorative and applied art and painting. Each time I browsed through them, I found something that I hadn't noticed before, and this fed my imagination and ideas no end. This new interest that had sprung up in my life filled the world around me with new shades of colour—I began to see them; and new sounds—I began to hear them better, and to associate them with colour and with new forms which I had not hitherto noticed. In the dry autumnal foliage and the withered branches, I suddenly perceived the drawings that nature herself creates, and subsequently transposed them onto the pages of my works. Sometimes I would spend a long time gazing at something that at first glance appeared insignificant, but I would see beauty in it, and an idea would come to me from out of the blue for a drawing that was just waiting to be created.
The sense that we live in a beautiful world, and that all that is beautiful is contained within the simplest of things—in peacefulness and in the deep, wise silence of nature—has never left me. A person might not be capable of conveying this simple beauty in colour, in music, in drawings, but his soul might become richer if he at least begins to see, hear and sense it a little better. His thoughts are filled to the brim with something important, something profound and positive, and he develops a desire to share this joy with other people.

The idea I wish to get across to those reading these lines and looking at my album is that not only is talent capable of manifesting itself in different ways, but so too is your faith in yourself, your faith in what you are capable of. The first steps in any undertaking are always taken somewhat hesitantly, but they are always interesting. It all starts with your own particular discovery, and with each subsequent step you will see a noticeable result. Once you have made up your mind to be creative, whether by drawing, painting, being a sculptor, or trying a hobby of any kind—love the works that you create: for your soul is in them, and so too is the support of the Creator, who led you through the flow of ideas, sending your thoughts in the right direction.

As I write these lines, I have every confidence that you, the reader, will try to discover new, limitless capabilities within your soul, and talents which you did not even know you had.

I hope that the drawings in this album will spur some of you on to have creative ideas of your own. Above all, however, feel the desire to do good and to be creative, changing our world for the better through your ideas. The world has such a great need for this, after all. And the joy that all creativity brings, and the feelings it gives you, make our souls richer, kinder and more at peace with the world.

I wish with all my heart that you might obtain this great blessing!

Ivanna Hodak