Vladimir Kush Life is Beautiful
The canvas is divided into a green field—verdant and full of life—and a black field—death, defined by a dangerously close, looming shadow of a bird of prey. A rabbit is running for cover across the green. The contrast of green and black may as well be a symbol of a gambling table where life itself is at stake. In the contours of the shadow we can make out an outline of an arching bow, bent before the moment of release. 

The painting is full of movement: it is in the desperate dash of the rabbit and in the swooping of the predator over the grass stretching as if under a strong wind. The very angle-to-angle perspective underscores the swiftness of what is happening.
Closely examining the field in the painting we might have strong reservations about the reality of the threat from the air, especially considering how timid a creature a rabbit usually is. 

Vladimir Kush Cruise of Cinderellla
Shoes are an attribute of the traveler on foot. Boats are an attribute of the seafarer. This painting uses the metaphor or a “transfer” from the traveler on land to a traveler by sea. “Walking Beyond Three Seas” is the title of the book written in the form of a diary by a Russian merchant, Afanasy Nikitin, who travelled to India a quarter of a century before Vasco da Gama.
 
The artist’s imagination was inspired by the story of Cinderella losing her slipper at the ball. The prince found the slipper and, in the end, she married him. Later, the happy couple incorporated the slipper into the family coat of arms.
 
The ocean liner in the painting is sailing over the seas, as if gliding on the dance floor. One can imagine that this is a ship designed for jolly cruises, laughter, merriment, and happy times. Every deck is outfitted with dance floors and concert halls, where elaborate and lavish “Cinderella balls” are regularly held throughout the voyage.
 
The cruise liner symbolizes leaving the mundane of everyday life behind and taking off toward the oceans of fun.

Vladimir Kush Tree of Life
In world mythology, the Tree of Life is associated with the world’s axis connecting Heaven and Earth, and man aspiring to spiritual heights, with the cycles of life, death and revival and with the universe’s journey of perpetual renewal. Ancients believed in a relationship between man and tree, akin to that of communicating vessels – anything happening to one, translates to the other. Hence, a tree can become a man’s twin brother, a friend, a soul mate. By watching the ‘twin’ tree in the most crucial moments of a man’s life, they were able to determine if he was taking the right step and how the next chapter of his life was to unfold.

In Japan, bits of paper with messages are tied to certain sacred trees, trees that are considered to be abodes of ‘kami’ spirits or Shinto gods. The Charter Oak (White oak or Quercus Alba) became part of American history and Connecticut’s state tree as depicted on its 50 State Quarter. In essence, this is a metaphor of the tree reflecting the phenomena of human life. Using a metaphor, we give human aspirations tangible substance through the concepts of a tree’s growth and development.

Vladimir Kush Winged Bridge
There are two bridges in the painting. One bridge is the rainbow, the creation of nature, connecting the Earth and Heaven. According to the ancients, the souls of the fallen warriors on the rainbow are on the bridge, on their way to heaven.
 
The second bridge connects two shores and, as we see, is made of butterflies. It can also be called a “rainbow bridge”. It is known that the colors of the rainbow appear when the sunlight is refracted while penetrating the scales of the butterfly wings. Butterflies, as an emblematic symbol of the human soul, can be seen in different parts of the World. Jesus Christ holding the butterfly in his palm symbolizes the resurrection.
 
The worker bees definitely took a big part in the construction of the magic Bridge.
 
Symbolism of the images in the painting:
 
Worker Bees: Symbol of hard work. It is known that the hexagon shape of the cells is determined by minimalizing the wax material spent. Honey is always sweeter on the other side.
 
Sky: The curtain of heaven, which moves, revealing the miracles on the Earthly stage. Caterpillar on tracks and the Beecycle: Symbolizes the slow-paced movement and a fast ride. Bridge: Connects the two shores or two notions, standing apart from each other. Metaphor is also a bridge…
 
Butterfly: The symbol of beauty and free flight (the trajectory of its flight could not be figured by scientists).
 
Bridge of Butterflies: Connects two contradicting notions: free flight and bonding to the Earth. The beauty can connect things, seemingly far off from each other, at first glance.

Vladimir Kush Back Side of the Moon
The new moon is situated between the Sun and Earth and the side facing the Earth remains in shadow.  The sun shines on its backside.
 
In past centuries, the backside of the moon was an enigma for humans.  The only way to see the backside was with the help of spaceships.
 
That fact has evoked fantastic theories about its surface. One legend says that the moon is an artificial satellite created by aliens, made from materials found on Earth.  The structure of the surface could have been repetitious like a brick wall…
 
The painting is a metaphor for the imagination, reaching out to the mysterious unknown and discovering familiar structures.
 
The beam of light is a metaphor for the “inner sight” of humans.

Vladimir Kush Garden Pool
Background
In this painting, the artist looks back from the present to his early years where a garden was a safe haven, a place where miracles happened and huge red apples fell to the ground from above. Under the shade of the green foliage, he took refuge from the demands of grown-ups. The future artist remembered it as a desirable, exclusive spot, a ‘neatly altered landscape within a landscape’ or a kind of tableau. In the words of Roger Caillois, “Man created a garden not for survival, but for pleasure.”
 
Key Concept
This exclusive spot nicely accommodates a game of pool. The green baize on a billiard table is like a canvas stretched on a frame, and the intricate trajectory, traced by the cue movements, resembles a pattern of brush strokes.
 
Billiard symbolizes a return to the artist’s present, where playing with sticks is replaced by the use of a pool cue, brush and palette. The role of a garden coincides with the role of a painting. It is an image within an image: the pool table fitting into the garden as the present into the past.
 
According to Caillois, “It is necessary to show that this is the very place where human creativity starts.”
 
It is worth noting that the art of a painter and that of a billiard player also share a certain symbolic ritual. After a few preliminary strokes, a ball is pocketed with a final shot, just as a painting is finished with a crowning stroke of the brush (‘natural materials’ used in both cases). “Done!” exclaims the artist, and a new masterpiece is born.
 
A sense of the joy of life and playing is upheld by the bright colors of the painting. The game aspect is supported by the figures of badminton players in the background, and a closer look reveals a secret allusion of people playing pool in the leaves of the trees.

Vladimir Kush Stealthy Night
Glowing eyes of the cat is the shining light of reason amidst the chaos of the everyday human life.

Its piercing eyes are hanging in the dark just as the smile of the Cheshire Cat from the Alice in the Wonderland.

Vladimir Kush Moonwatch III
Since ancient times, the sky never has ceased to amaze us. We are looking at the moon and unexpectedly discover that it is as if we looked into a deep, dark well! Maybe we just glimpsed the dark side of the moon, which is ordinarily beyond the reach of our eye?
 
Channeling mankind’s collective stream of consciousness, you might recall the predictions of an old star tracker. He thought that the hidden side of the moon was concave.
 
Extrapolating from that, he concluded that one day, heavenly forces would turn the moon around its axis, and its light, as if focused through a magnifying glass, would burn the earth.

Vladimir Kush Mystery of the Concealed Letter
• Children are fond of adventure stories.
• While sharing the characters’ challenges and adversities, young readers learn through the characters’ experiences.
• Today’s older generation may have enjoyed Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant (The Children of Captain Grant), a novel by Jules Verne. • In 1936, there was a popular Russian children’s film of the same name. • The film began with a bottle found in the ocean. The bottle contains a note from the lost-at-sea expedition. A lot of courage and wit is used to decipher the location of those missing and to find the captain.
The human soul (that of a woman in this case) can be represented symbolically as a kind of bottle with a text sealed inside. Love, patience, and courage are required to understand the message. Like Le Reve, this painting illustrates the stream of consciousness that shapes us. Thus, the shape of the bottle is determined by the current of water streaming down the narrow neck.

Vladimir Kush City by the Sea
A glowing megapolis seen from the height of a plane, constellation of lights and a tangle of highways and bridges spreading tentacles in all directions with its pulsating nightlife of cars. Metaphor of a giant squid emerging from the abyss of the ocean, alike the memories of a person emerging from the depths of his subconscious mind in the shape of a tangle of images. 

Vladimir Kush Route 66
Background:
Means of transport have long been such an important part of human existence. He was a genius, so to speak, the one who invented wheels. 
Those wheels became not only a necessity of life but also a means of learning about the world. They helped the man to map out continents, to make history with great geographical discoveries, to master the American prairies and to tame wild expanses of Asia.
 
Key concept:
We live by sensations and that of flying (or desire to be airborne) is a powerful stimulus bolstering our sense of the high speed of life. Anyone having a flight of fancy knows it feels like taking off. Something usually referred to as “wings sprouting from my back”.
The dragonfly steering a motorbike is a metaphor of someone flying through the vast surrounding space and bursting the bounds of the mundane. 

Vladimir Kush In Love We Trust
Purse is a symbol of wealth and accumulation. But only love is the master key which opens the purse of happiness, we could say paraphrasing the words of a famous American writer.

Vladimir Kush Brass Band
The crawling snail is a symbol of the slowness of the movement. Known Latin expression: «vicistis cochleam tarditudine» translates as “overcome the snail with tardiness”.
 
Suddenly the energetic tuba player arrives, and the imagery is changed! The battalion of snails starts on a fast track in tune with the victorious march.

Vladimir Kush Segway Seahorse
There could be no doubt that what we have here is a brand new fauna specimen, a fresh artifact uncovered by the artist’s imagination and belonging simultaneously to two elements – the Ocean and the Earth.
The back of this peculiar creature’s head in the form of a seahorse resembles the head of an ordinary horse broadly. And the overall shape is that of a corresponding chess figure. This fish does not have scale; a corset of bone plates replaces it with the edges protruding from under the skin. Some of the plates have spikes and look like a suit of armor that was used as protection wears for the horses in the knightly tournaments. 
As a seahorse he could be expected to move only up and down under the water, climbing over the seaweed and plants, but having a wheel makes it possible for him to ride along magically turning into a unicycle rider in a circus! The audience gazes in admiration at his colorful appearance, and the silence of the ocean depths is replaced by the burst of earthly noises and commotion of applause. Whereas before he was drifting vertically or stayed put, latching with his tail onto some undercurrent growth, now in his new role he can fully join in the bustle of the city life. 
We can also notice a small but significant detail – a little headlight attached to the wheel with a star inside. It allows the new species of a seahorse to navigate the busy city roads even by night safely.
The rear fin that looks like a wing reminds us of the mythical winged horse Pegasus, the darling of the Muses. We know from the Greek mythology the various versions of Pegasus’ birth, including his appearance from the ‘springs of Oceanus’ – hence the name (πηγή – pēgē – meaning "spring, well").
And so here he is, in full glory of an all-round performer!

Vladimir Kush Sugar Bone
This 3D image contains an allusion of the love affair between a man and woman. Certainly, hugs and kisses are a part of this game. The lips and breasts on the sculpture sustain the image of female sexual attractiveness. Humankind will retain the image of love in the bone structure, passing it to its descendants throughout the centuries.

Vladimir Kush Voyeur
This scultpure sets out to provide one of the links in the love symbolism of the ‘key-lock’ sequence – the artifact of visualizing a love affair.
There are famous images by Degas of women taking a bath and drying themselves afterward and here is how he explained the secret of such compositions:
“Naked figures are usually depicted posing for the viewer. I, however, paint the ordinary modest women, who are busy taking the usual care of their bodies… It is like watching them through a key-hole.”
 
In this sculpture the watcher, having previously been in the dark, turns into a certain link in the love chain and becomes an artifact. In the present triad of key, lock and keyhole, every symbol acquires its own meaning in time and shape.

Vladimir Kush Argentinian Tango
Tango Argentino – the dance of passionate love. There is a famous tango scene in the film Scent of a Woman where Al Pachino demonstrates his manly grace of an old soldier.
‘The two of us’ is the subject of the artist’s famous earlier painting and sculpture Always Together

Key concept:

An interesting comment on YouTube about the Tango Argentino:
“Pull her in as if you wanted her this very moment, push her away as if she ruined your life!”
It truly illustrate the principle of the wrench working!
Shakespeare’s Slender in the Merry Wives of Windsor must have meant the same by his concept of marriage, though he expressed it in a somewhat old-fashioned manner…Nippers effect? 

Vladimir Kush Guardians
The many-eyed Pineapple reminds us of the Greek myth about the giant, Argus, who had 100 eyes in his head and all over his body. Hera, the sister and wife of Zeus, appointed Argus to look after the white heifer that was Io. Zeus had fallen in love with Io and to protect her from the fiery wrath of Hera had changed her into a white heifer. The name, Argus, has become synonymous with a vigilant and tireless guardian.

At the same time, the spherical shape of the pineapple is associated with the other legend in which a hundred-eyed guardian is symbolic of a starry sky that observes our life here, on Earth.