Vasil Stepanavich Zharnasek is a Belarusian landscape artist, a representative of naive art. He was born in 1929 in the village of Sitniki, Lepel District. His grandfather was a church attendant and painted icons.
When Vasil Stepanavich was still a boy, misfortune struck him – a German bomb deprived him of his right arm and eye. However, he did not surrender to fate, did not lose his optimism, and did not abandon his beloved pastime – painting. With his left hand, he continued to paint the native Lepel nature with its blue lakes and magnificent forests, as if from a children's fairy tale.He learned to do everything with his left hand: mow grass, repair radios. And there was a time when he earned his living by painting carpets. Then he worked at a club, at the post office, at a school, sought his happiness outside the country, and yet returned to his homeland and settled in Lepel forever.
The name of Vasil Zharnasek is known not only in Lepel, Vitebsk, Minsk, but also in other cities of the former Soviet Union.