Brightening up gray Ukrainian hospital walls

Bring a little cheer to the hospitals and clinics for sick children in Ukraine. That’s exactly what a couple of young artists decided to do to help kids get well sooner, Joinfo.ua reports with reference to UA Today.

These two believe walls can help with the healing process. And color plays a big role in how kids perceive their stay at the doctor’s office.

‘There’s a book therapy and this is an art therapy. A type of treatment so to speak, when a child sees something beautiful, it helps much more than gray walls,’ the artist Halyna Hedzevich says.

The kids like the paintings and the doctors say it actually makes them feel much more at home rather than at a hospital.

‘It’s a symbol of comfort – a pet-cat, the storks, home, – all symbol a Ukrainian household,’ Treatment and Recovery Unit Director Tetyana Holovchenko says.

So far, their work can be seen in doctor’s offices across Ukraine – from neurologists to dentists, and even fourteen different hospital wings. They usually work only in state-run facilities because they tend to be painted either in gray or beige only.

Their work is truly a labor of love, it doesn’t come cheap. Paint, brushes, stencils, all can easily add up to a hefty sum. The supplies alone for their work for the cardiology unit at this children’s hospital cost them about $500.

They never take money from the doctors, though, everything comes from private donations and social media crowd funding campaigns. The paint is always non-toxic, acrylic base because it lasts much longer.

‘Usually, the walls built during Soviet times were out of the sand, if we use oil-based paint, it will chip right away, so that’s why all those gray walls are chipping and people think it’s the norm. It isn’t, we need to change that, make the new generation happy,’ the artist Halyna Hedzevich says.

Halyna’s next project is painting nearly a hundred square meters of a children’s hospital in Kharkiv this fall. Halyna says she is looking forward to making winters feel a little warmer there soon.