HOW creativity came into your life...
- Once, when I was a child, I went to visit my friend. I accidentally opened a cabinet
door, and there was a Japanese engraving. It made such an impression on me that I sat
down in an armchair and couldn't move for a very long time. Some kind of revolution took
place in my soul, and from that moment I realized that I wanted to do art.
My mother took me to art school. I brought an album with my drawings. At
that time we lived in Kamchatka and I had a view of two beautiful volcanoes: Avachinsky
and Karyaksky. I drew them and in the foreground there was a house with a fence and a
butterfly sitting on the fence. And my first teacher liked it so much that he said:
"Yeah, we need students like that." That's how it all started. I really liked studying.
I was lucky with my teacher: he taught us not only how to draw, we also went to the
cinema and to the ballet. We went to exhibitions and discussed. He had very interesting
conversations about art. I was glad for those first steps into the art world.
It all started with Japanese art. This theme is still present in your work.
What does it mean to you now?
- It's not just present in my art now - I think it's been with me ever since I came into contact with it as a child. When I was in art school, I cut out everything about Japan, all the prints from Young Artist magazine. I still have them to this day. And now, being a more mature person, I still come back to this subject and I think I'll come back more than once. I'm very fond of Japanese literature, Murakami for example, and Japanese cinema. I really liked the film "The Legend of Narayama", and the image of the main character is partly imprinted in my work "A Glass of Water". In general it's a philosophical topic because water is spiritual purification. It's a fusion of image, philosophy, and color - you just have to look, and everyone will see their own.
Besides Japanese art, what else do you draw your inspiration from?
- Probably in this life in general - travel, books, movies. If something I see, an idea, excites me, it is very deep, it will work inside me, and I always hope that it will be reflected in my works. I love Paris very much, and I have works devoted to that city. I love Venice. It's a very mysterious city: you can live your whole life there in one day. And it caught me, I wanted to understand what this mystery is. It's the masks, the mirrors, the vintage, and something that's in the air. Before I went there, I watched a lot of movies, pictures, to get in the mood. It really helped me to understand Venice, because I had very little time, just one day. But sometimes one person can see much more in a day than another person can see in a month. The main thing here is not just to look, but to see. And these impressions were continued in my works.
Under the influence of all these emotions and impressions, do you paint quickly?
- It depends. You can write a work in one day or in many months. Creativity is a
process of mental tension. Sometimes you can feel everything so deeply and suffer inside
that you can write in one day. And sometimes the work doesn't go right away, like The
Nostalgia Salesman, which I wrote for eight months. It's very important to immerse
yourself in the image. Sometimes it takes time. Art is not entertainment, it's hard work
that requires a lot of physical and spiritual strength and a certain amount of mental
tension.
- It seems to me that when creative people are choosing materials for work,
they always choose the materials they feel most passionate about.
Why did you choose the materials with which you work?
- When it comes to painting I love oil. I don't like smooth paint, I like a pastose type of modeling. In my opinion, my best works are oil paintings. I have a better feel for it. I can't explain it, it's a very subtle thing.
To sum up, what does creativity bring to a person's life in general?
- I like what Picasso said: "Sometimes you make a drawing in five minutes, and for that you have to live forty years." That's probably what creativity is all about. It's a big job, hard work that requires dedication, mental and physical effort, but you get a great return. When the work works out, it's a very happy moment.
