The planar-decorative principle, the rhythmic application of  colour, and the presence of complete or partial symmetry build bridges between folk painting and ornament. These principles and techniques help to create a world of perpetual  presence, without past and future. This world is close and familiar and at the same time unattainable in its illusory perfection. 

The schematic and formal character of greeting images with symmetrical pairs of doves and text (such as ‘In memory', 'Wishing you happiness', 'Greetings', 'Let happiness beat its wings on your destiny, as a swan beats its wings on water') derive not from ornament directly, but from murals and figurative elements, in particular the symmetrical birds, and kitsch, sentimental greeting cards. The resemblance of  ornament, the specificity of figures and subjects, semiotic structure, semantic openness, and the clear symbolism of images (swans, pigeons, deer) give folk painting the properties of an 'enzyme' in the countryside house when faced with the new social and existential reality. Therefore, the artisanal and semantic formula of folk paintings  ersatz ancient traditions that could  no longer fully meet the vital needs of farmers.

In these conditions, the traditional yet innovative creativity of rural artists was shaped.  Some well-known artists that exemplify this tendency are  Hanna Sobachko, Kateryna Bilokur, and Maria Pryimachenko. However, there were numerous lesser-known folk masters, amateur performers, master craftsmen, and artisans who were creating folk paintings. Folk paintings had an ‘enzyme-like’ property — also characteristic of photography, radio, electricity, and socio-organisational activities — that stimulated and intensified the process of re-semantization of the rural environment, the environment of small towns, and the suburbs of large cities.

 A defining feature of Ukrainian folk painting is exemplified by ‘Cossack Mamai’ with its parsuna and iconic poetics, its seriation, and variability.

The plot and image are replicated with slight variability on the dominant features. The variations are selectively constructed depending on the tastes and preferences of the inhabitants of particular regions or centres. But given the limited scope and overview of this essay, I will not delve into a detailed analysis of regional plots and archetypes, the characteristics of genres and styles, or the figurative specifics of folk pictures in different localities and areas of Ukraine. I will limit myself to a list of the plots and genres that were most ‘popular’ among farmers and, accordingly, were the most common throughout Ukraine.

The plot ‘People go to Church’ was one of the most widespread throughout nearly the entire Ukrainian territory. It is composed of a gentle, sunny landscape with an elegant and impressively depicted church, people dressed in festive attire heading towards it, and village huts symmetrically arranged on both sides.

The image of a castle on a lakeshore with swans was quite common. Dense and often blossoming trees grow around the castle, a lake reflects the pink sunset, and white swans that swim on the dark water give the picture a mysterious, romantic mood.

  In many regions, a rural landscape with a river, a pond, the same swans, a fisherman in a boat, and neat toy-looking huts was also common. The typicality of this landscape is a reference to the notion of ‘eternal peace’ — an ontological moment of presence.

 The same landscape was often depicted at dusk featuring a red-pink and orange sky burning in the west and reflected in the water of a lake or river.  From the depths of the image, a chthonic darkness emerges that generates disturbing, eschatological premonitions. Simultaneously the special colour of the red-pink burning sky gives some works a romantic mood.

The landscape of a village or town featuring neat houses, windmills, and a church built upon a mountain that looms above a river was quite common, in particular in the villages of Middle Naddniprianshchyna. The image is brought to life with the depiction of  fisherman on a boat or an old-wheeled steamer sailing down the river. The latter is predominant in paintings created in the 1920s and 1930s. 

The traditional rural still life featuring a watermelon, a bottle of wine, flowers, and fruits became widespread. This still life was considered a symbol of familial harmony and well-being. One can call it a ‘greeting’ still life.

The folk painting  ‘Cossack and a girl near the well’ occupies a prominent place in folk plots and genres. This plot emerged in folk paintings around the mid-1920s. Earlier samples either did not exist or have not been studied by researchers. ‘Cossack Mamai’ and the works of Mykola Prymonenko informed  the heart of this plot. In his unpublished work, K. H. Skalatskyi points at the icon ‘Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well’ as another possible plot origin. The painting ‘Cossack and Girl…’  can be divided into three genre variations based on certain compositional and stylistic features which can be titled as:

• Tragic conflict (dramatic). The meeting of a Cossack and a girl is presented as the meeting of two worlds: the warmth of the  home and comfort contrast  the windy steppe, battles, campaigns, wandering, and vagrancy. In the story of a soldier and a girl meeting near a well,  their relationship brings not only love but also suffering. After all, the fate of  the Cossack dictates sacrificial love composed of long periods apart in wait for the desired meeting again, all the while, facing the risk that the Cossack may die in battle or be captured.
• The meeting of a Cossack and a girl under ordinary living circumstances. The Cossack is deprived of the strict warrior’s features and attributes, and the girl is well dressed as if preparing to meet a loved one. This plot is often accompanied with a caption such as: ‘My girl, give the horse a drink ’ or ‘Give water to drink from a full bucket’.
• Instead of the ontological drama, a melodramatic and burlesque deliberation dominates. In some cases, the Cossack is depicted as an ordinary country boy wearing a bryl (hat) and playing an accordion, and the girl is listening to him play and sing,  while pouring water past the bucket into the ground. Another more common composition, captioned 'Run, Petro and Natalka, for mother is coming with a rolling pin', concerns the plot of a famous painting by Mykola Pymonenko.

Another fairly common image in Ukraine is ‘Angel Guards the Children’. This plot has two predominant situational variations:

• an angel stands in a protective gesture extending his hands over a boy and girl who are playing on the edge of the abyss;
• an angel guards two children (a boy and girl) who are crossing a river or stream on bridge-masonry in the morning.

These plots are prominent n in a number of European countries; however, they are most frequently found on German postcards, in books, and in magazine reproductions. Some of them date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The plot with the Angel and children is common in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland, but it seems to have only acquired the status of folk painting in Ukraine.

The mysterious painting ‘Olenka and a Deer’ is widespread across Ukraine and is most likely associated with the ancient phenomenon of totemism. The girl and the deer are depicted as a married couple, surrounded by flowers and wearing flower crowns. Based on the girl’s clothes and other details, it is likely this plot emerged from Western European fairy-tales and mystical spheres. It is reminiscent of another well-known story, ‘Girl with a Unicorn’.The paintings ‘Olenka and a Deer’ and ‘Angel Guards the Children’ are simplified, folklorised, equivalents of their modern European counterparts.

‘Being Taken to the ‘Other Side’,popularly called ‘Rusalky’, is a no less mysterious painting. It reproduces the nocturnal glamorous and mystical scene already described above. The soul of the dead is pictured as a sleeping woman in a luxurious boat, towed by a pair of swans, and led by an angel. They are moving towards the chthonic nocturnal darkness of the afterlife. The boat is accompanied by beautiful and well-dressed mythological female creatures, rysalky. There are no doubts about the non-local origins of this plot as it contains characteristic features of European sentimental-mystical modernism of the late 19th century.

There are also sentimental and glamorous modern plots featuring ladies in a boat feeding swans or pigeons, waiting for someone, sitting in a gazebo on an island, and so on. They were also distributed en masse, but lacked a single style or dominant plot or genre.

Paintings based on the plots of popular folklore or literary works (for example, 'Kateryna', 'Bondarivna', 'I was Thirteen', 'Taras Bulba with his Sons', 'House Maid', 'Oh, the Fire is Burning on the Mountain') and a variety of their editions did not become widespread.

In conclusion, it should be noted that folk painting comprises  a stage in the cultural life of folklore, which is constantly reproduced in various formal and figurative manifestations. Its plots, landscapes, and minor forms; greetings, and fragments introduced the spatial and temporal reality of life through figurative form into the spacetime of the rural house. At the same time, folk paintings contained metaphors, myths, and folkloric cosmological symbolism.

Folk painting as an environmental phenomenon has lost those features that aroused the interest of the rural population — for example, it has declined as a socio-cultural phenomenon — with the changing socio-political context. t However, as an artistic phenomenon, it has persisted as the manifestation of  folkloric reality, the bearer of archaic symbolism, metaphors, and archetypes, and it was revealed as one of the artistic-cultural phenomena of modern life.