“On a country road the man of average years goes. A heavy rucksack, maybe, presses his back, but he does not simply hasten, but flies with furious inspiration, while it is possible to hear cocks sing, sheep bleat This is Chuvash artist Nikolai Plonish coming back to the village Srednaya Kamishla of the Tatarstan Republic. Perhaps, in his soul, now there is a melody masterly played on the accordian. Thin fingers run on the keys, soar above them, as the sawgull above the water. Sitting on a ladder on a high porch, Plonish is playing the accordion. Nobody and nothing but this melody may show the condition of his happy heart. And in one minute he is in the field. Greedily inhaling the smell of wormwood and wild clover, he looks at the native steppe. This is a place lovely to the heart; at last, I am here!”
These lines are taken from the magazine “Lik of Chuvashia”, issued in Cheboksary. In it a script writer Valeri Alekseev has published the script “Light and Warmth”, which tells about the creative destiny of artist Nikolai Plonish. Under the same name he has created a color documentary film which was on screens of cinemas in 1993.
Plonish’s paintings are about childhood, about the quiet life of the province, rural holidays, and other daily activities of peasants. “Autumn Rain”, “Good Morning, Yuliana”, “Will Have a Rest”, and “Earth’s Cradle” are autobiographical paintings. They are painted as purely as children’s imagination paintings, and are almost physically felt as warmth and light. In 1986, Plonish held his personal exhibitions in the Central House of Writers and Children�s Book House in Moscow.
Nikolai Ivanovich Plonish was born in 1936 in the village of Srednyaja Kamyshla, Oktyabrski district, Tatarskaya ASSR. He studied at the Ceramic College in the city of Mirgorod until 1962. In 1984 he graduated from the graphic art faculty of the Chuvash Pedagogical Institute. He has been a member of the Artists Union since 1990 and an Honored Artist of the Chuvash Republic since 1996. In 1998, he moved to Voronezh. He participated in municipal, regional, zonal, republican and All-Union exhibitions since 1964.
His paintings are in museums and galleries including the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the City of Cheboksary, the City of Ulyanovsks, the City of Gorky, the City of Suzdal, the Consulate of Hungary, and a private museum in Desnya. His works can also be found in the United States and Japan.
Plonish died during a creative trip to Tatarstan.
