Post Square 12.18.13 ~ Rock and a Hard Place
Revisiting the story from December 13th, continued
coverage of the anti-government demonstrations in Ukraine. The protestors shown in
the cover photo are for closer ties with the European Union. They don’t trust
the motives of Russia,
which has just given them a 15 billion dollar loan. They wonder what their president,
Viktor Yanukovych, has agreed to, to get such a deal.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, also cut the price of natural
gas for Ukraine,
but, he said, this may just be temporary. There are suspicions that Yanukovych
secured the loan by offering as collateral Ukraine property, possibly its
natural gas pipeline network.
Ukraine
is heading for serious financial trouble. It has been bouncing back and forth
between Russia
and the European Union for a solution. The amount of trade it does with both is
the same, but Russia has
threatened to put up barriers if Ukraine goes with the E.U. And if Ukraine turns to Moscow, it’s possible that their businesses
would fall prey to the Russians.
The protestors, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, who
have gathered at an encampment in Ukraine’s
capital, Kiev,
are against Yanukovych’s decision to back away from negotiations with the E.U.
about new terms for a trade pact. They are demanding that he and his government
resign.
I could have picked out an abstract section of the cover
photo, there were many, but I kept going back to this woman’s face. She is one
of the protestors. What isn’t showing is her attractive fluffy white scarf and
matching hat with the Christmas holly pin decorating it.
I was going to trace the image and color it, as I am wont to
do, but I decided to shed my dinosaur scales on this one and use Picasa to
create an image I could paint over. I scanned the one inch square cut from the
newspaper, played with it in Picasa to distort it, printed it, then used
acrylic paint and colored pencil over the print.
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