Antonina and Yurii Shvets are, technically, refugees from the war in Ukraine. Now happily hosted in Hellifield, North Yorkshire, they have brought their skills and, frankly, charming personalities to our relatively peaceful part of the world.

Antonina (Tonya) and Yurii fled from home in Lviv on 24th February 2022, the day the war started. Fortunately for them they had the foresight to have their car packed and fuelled and ready for a speedy exit. They arrived at the Polish border a few hours later, and just two hours before the border was closed for male Ukrainians.



A small scrap of paper with a scribbled address of a friend in Poland gave them their first destination. Fortunately they were expected and the stories we hear of Polish hospitality were found to be true. Tonya and Yurii stayed with their new friends for 5 months - and being the talented people they are they, of course, learned to speak Polish.

The couple heard about the UK visa scheme and applied. It was a slow start as their first host fell foul of some of the technical details of the scheme. Fortunately a new host was soon found and they are both delighted and extremely grateful to have found such a warm welcome in Hellifield.

Both Yurii and Tonya have relatives back in the Ukraine who fortunately live in the safer western part of the country, but are still regularly troubled by the almost nightly air raid sirens.

As a child Tonya started painting using gouache (simple water based paint), but desperately wanted to use oil paint to achieve a glossy look. But oild paint is expensive and being from a poor family this was not possible. So she mixed her gouache paints with butter to achieve the result she wanted. Of course it was a disgusting mess but prompted her grandmother, also poor, to spend all she could on buying some real oil paint for her granddaughter.

Tonya trained and qualified in the Ukraine as a medical doctor - mostly because her Mother insisted, she says - but has always painted and always wanted to be an illustrator of children's books. She is determined to follow that passion and clearly has considerable talent, as the pictures in this article demonstrate.

In this video called "Aghasura the Giant Snake" by Pabs Dadivas, Tonya's drawings have been combined with video, lyrics and music to tell one story of Krishna's Adventures of Govinda.

Tonya's husband Yurii is a photographer with a passion for the artistic photo and is, I'm told, an excellent food photographer. To make sure he can find work he is rapidly brushing up on his computer programming skills and studying English with the support of Craven College in Skipton. Both are managing to improve their basic English, speaking fluent Northern may take a little longer.