If the mischievous Mickey Mouse painted a graffiti self-portrait on a wall, and a blue-eyed bunny in a bright red dress reclined on a shiny black piano, you can rest assured: these are the works of Libi. You can't confuse them with any others. Her own style. A fairy tale for children and (especially!) for adults, remaining children at heart.
In the galleries where Libi's daring, witty works are exhibited, hardly anyone knows that the storyteller who has captivated the public transfers her fantasies to canvas in more than extreme conditions. She lives in a country where there has been war for many months in a row. And the dreamer Libi moved to this hot country straight from Siberia. Winters in her motherland are harsh. Sometimes - minus fifty degrees.
“Here are my early works,” says Lyubov Redkodubskaya. “Lake Baikal! At sunset it’s really magic. And this is my Israeli cycle. I painted portraits of fellow pupils of our eldest daughter Valeria.”
“Whose portrait is this?”
“This is the portrait of the granddaughter of my fellow student, a very pleasant woman whom I met at the UTime ulpan. Charming girl!”
Lyuba is a design engineer by training. Graduate of Irkutsk National Research Technical University.
“During my student years I met Vlad, who studied at a different faculty. First love at first sight! He married me three years after graduating from the university.”
Lyuba became interested in painting as a child: her parents sent her to art school. Nature in Siberia seems harsh, but it’s so colorful! You can sit for hours with a palette and canvas on the shores of Baikal - and every time you discover something new, some marvelous colors and shades.
The real revolution happened about 10 years ago. An aspiring design engineer (“By that time, a factory building had been built according to our team’s design”), she went on her first maternity leave. And before Valeria was born, she had been overwhelmed by painting. Lyuba didn’t even notice that she was no longer able to live a day without a palette!
The Redkodubskys immigrated to Israel in January 2023.
“We arrived in a crowd: my husband and I and two children, my sister and her husband and two girls, and our mother,” recalls Lyuba. “The plane landed in the evening, at about 9 o’clock. There is a 5 hour difference from Irkutsk – it was already 2 o’clock in the morning there. Children fall off their feet. When Nativ’s staff saw the condition of our children, they immediately sent us to a hotel. People in Israel are goodhearted and always ready to help.”
Vlad, Lyuba’s husband, managed to get a job quickly.
“Thanks to this, I started painting again,” says Lyuba. “There was a lot of new impressions! The aura in Israel is amazing.”
Painting (unlike Hebrew) is a universal, international language. The paintings of the newly minted Israeli woman attracted the attention of gallery owners. Lyuba was offered to cooperate.
Meanwhile, Vlad and Lyuba were offered to start learning Hebrew in a state ulpan.
“But how could we study in the state ulpan every day if there was no one to take care of our children? My mother was busy with my youngest niece, who was only seven months old...” says Lyuba. “Even if I studied Hebrew in the evenings, Vlad would never have been able to stand it with the kids five days a week. We had to abandon the state ulpan. Friends recommended us to study in the private UTime ulpan. Classes in the evening, not every day, but twice a week.”
Lyuba began her studies.
“I was incredibly lucky - my teacher was Natalie Bozik,” says Lyuba. “She also immigrated to Israel from Irkutsk. We immediately found a common language. Learning Hebrew in the ulpan was easy and fun. For example, when we were learning the verbs “lashevet” and “lakum” (“sit down” - “stand up”), Natalie forced the whole group to sit down and stand up - it’s easier to remember new words. At every lesson we listened to poems and songs, including children's songs. New Hebrew words and constructions were very easy to remember.”
The psychological barrier (“I will never say a word in Hebrew!”) ingloriously collapsed. Lyuba began to speak Hebrew. She immediately felt confident. Now she could already explain herself to the saleswoman at a supermarket and a pediatrician.
“What surprises you about Israel?”
“It seems to me that after October 7 nothing can surprise us”.
For the Redkodubskys, the war became a real challenge. In the first days of October 2023, Vlad flew to Irkutsk to finally settle some matters and see his parents. Lyuba and her children remained in Rishon LeZion. Early on the morning of October 7, they were awakened by the sound of a siren. Lyuba didn’t even have time to get scared - she picked up her sleepy little son, pushed her daughter out of the bedroom and rushed with the children onto the staircase.
“Vlad insisted that we go to Irkutsk at least for a while,” says Lyuba. “I put canvases and paints in a suitcase. We arrived in Irkutsk at the end of October. But even there, as soon as the children heard a knock or an ambulance siren, they were terribly scared. They thought that a rocket attack had begun.”
”However, you returned to Israel in January 2024, at the height of the war”.
“Yes, we returned home to Rishon LeZion,” confirms Lyuba. “There was, of course, a feeling of anxiety. But there was no panic. Because in Israel the army knows how to protect civilians and wants to protect them”.
“Lyuba, where are you going to work in Israel? Are you eager to continue drawing or to be an engineer?”
“I want to work as a design engineer.”
“What about painting?”
“In any case, this is a hobby - a passion, but for life. Do you know what a design engineer feels when he sees that his drawings have become a building? You come to the site - and you are euphoric.”
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