she created her first painting, Under the Maple, Under the Green One…: “This is after the song “under the maple, under the green one, there’s a young lad lying…” and, of course, a young girl is handing her heart to him. The girl’s heart is always bigger than the boy’s." The very next day she demanded a large piece of cardboard – she intended to draw The Ship – Noah’s Ark. Petronele outlined a big oval – the ship and began placing people aboard. First of all, she drew Noah and his seven daughters, then animals and birds, a couple of each. Noah and his daughters are rowing. Noah often turns and watches his eldest daughter in the stern, because his wife is very old and she only sits by the chest with her cane. "In this way, the human race has survived..." Petronele Gerlikiene’s most mature and emotionally strongest works, The Sorrowful One, A Mother, The Virgin, and Benefaction are broad-brush works and extremely poignant. Each work has a diversity of colours, a freedom of composition, and a powerful sense of wholeness. The emotional expressiveness and inner strength allows the comparison of her paintings to works of professional painters. Moreover, Gerlikiene’s works often surpass those made by professionals in terms of originality of the vision, uniqueness of interpretation, and humour. Petronele's most characteristic way of expression is colour. One of the most painterly yet most laconic pictures is The Sorrowful One, she uses only three colours: red, black and white. Her intuitive feeling for colour dictates her very unusual and unexpected colour combinations. Petronele's world is dominated by people. Figures are often depicted in motion and communicating with each other and the beholder. Her creative world encompasses whole human life with all its aspects, but most important subjects are woman’s fate and man's and woman’s relationship. These “eternal” subjects interpreted with understanding and humour, men are often ridiculed like in the picture Picking Cherries: calm, smiling woman pulls a man by the hand into a lake. “If a man is afraid, he can grab hold of a calf’s tail out of fear.” Petronele loved to paint piquant situations, love dramas and psychologically complicated situations. She was positive that she was portraying everything lifelike. "Petronele Gerlikiene", LTS, 2005 Petronele Gerlikiene was illiterate. As a child she had no possibility of going to school, later she felt there was no need