Luba's World

by Beth E. Wilson and photographs by Nancy Donskoj, March 04, 2009

 

Everyone’s an artist at five. In kindergarten, it’s impossible to do wrong with paint and paper or glitter and glue or macaroni or whatever. I’ve not quite put my finger on it, but somewhere along the line, someplace in grade school, most people settle into a pretty staunch “I’m no good at drawing” position, steadfastly refusing to express themselves visually in most any way at all.

And then there’s Luba Donskoj (pronounced DON-skoy). Born in Armenia, she survived some harrowing experiences during World War II. (A transport train she was on with over 3,000 other refugees was bombed, and she was one of only two survivors.) She married a Russian she met in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and the couple eventually emigrated to the United States. Luba raised her family, took care of her household, and enjoyed a reasonably prosperous (and significantly less eventful) life in America, never thinking about being an artist.

She still doesn’t think of herself as an artist, at least not in the sort of exclusive, elitist sense we normally use that term. For Luba, making art has become just about the same thing as breathing. In 1970, her daughter Nadja gave her a painting kit for her birthday, thinking that she might use it to fill some of her free time. As a child, Luba had had tutors in drawing and embroidery, but she’d never otherwise expressed herself artistically—so it was to Nadja’s immense surprise that she saw her mother take immediately, and voraciously, to this new enterprise. She assiduously filled every canvas that came with the kit, and when those ran out she began painting on the sheets. After the sheets were decorated, she moved on to the walls of the garage, which was serving as her impromptu studio. After filling the interior of the garage, she moved outside to paint a fantastic jungle mural, complete with life-sized animals, on the exterior wall of the structure.

Luba hasn’t looked back since. Her art-making grew over time to include any and all possible media—doll-making, improvised mosaics, painted plates, papier maché—forming, shaping, and painting just about anything she could lay her hands on. Sixteen years ago, she and her husband decided to move to a warmer climate in South Carolina, to enjoy their retirement. Her husband passed away in the middle of the trip down—but the intrepid Luba finished the move anyway, and settled there on her own for a dozen years. She befriended a woman who owned an ostrich ranch, and before you knew it, she was painting ostrich eggs with elaborate patterns derived from her Eastern European childhood, adding a number of her own innovations as well.