Friday, December 20, 2013

Post Square 12.18.13 ~ Rock and a Hard Place

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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