About 25 years ago, while living in Connecticut, I read a newspaper article about Grusha, a bear who lived in the woods of Siberia. One day he was captured and sent to a Moscow circus. He became a well known bicycle performer, spending his off hours in a cage until one night when it was left unlocked. Grusha climbed on his bike and rode 25 miles in the direction of his Siberian home before he was caught and returned to the circus.
I couldn’t forget him and in 1980, now living in Arizona, I painted an apprehensive Grusha riding off over the countryside on his red bicycle, with St. Basil’s in view far behind him. It was a painting I couldn’t part with and a few years later I wrote the story GRUSHA. In my fictional version, perhaps because I wanted so much to go back myself to what I had left behind, he rides all the way to Siberia where of course he will live happily ever after.
My painting of Grusha on his bicycle has been published on greeting cards and in magazine articles about my house, where it was seen hanging over the diningroom fireplace. Wherever the painting has been on view I have been flooded with requests for prints. GRUSHA was selected by the Society of Illustrators as one of the best illustrated books of the year it was published. That particular painting from the book was shown in the annual New York exhibition of works by the artists selected.
Grusha
Prints will be available soon
