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A Few Words about My Art and Myself When I paint, my goal is to find the soul of my subject - be it a person or an object – and to expose what I find on canvas. I use painting to communicate with people about things that matter. Purely physical attributes of what I see are secondary to me, and they are only as important as the extent to which they reveal the essence of my subjects. The most gratifying moments in my work happen when I establish a direct emotional connection with a subject or an idea. At those moments, I know that I can make others feel what I feel by looking at my painting. |
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My choices of subject matter reflect my background and experiences. I was born in 1967 in Odessa, a colorful city by the Black Sea (it was a part of the former Soviet Union then). There, I studied art under the local artists from my teenage years until graduation from the School of Architecture. During that time, I took part in a number of local art shows and received awards for my work. But most importantly, I learned to observe people and became fascinated with human nature and social interactions. With my sketchbook in hand, I frequented public parks, the main train station, and the beaches - all full of life, humor, and sadness – and practiced capturing the essence of what I saw on paper. These days, I am deeply interested in the transitional area between real and imaginary, where the boundaries between the two are blurred, just as it happens in dreams. Often, when I observe different objects or think about them, these objects begin to change their shape, color, and meaning in my mind. Such metamorphosis fascinates me, because as images of people and objects stray farther away from reality, they begin to acquire additional facets of meaning and become more emotionally charged. In my most recent series of paintings, “Color Dreams”, I am trying not only to capture this way of seeing the world, but also to achieve greater freedom of imagination and artistic expression. The representational elements in "Color Dreams" serve only as initial clues, while the more abstract, free-flowing character of these paintings lets the viewers move beyond the obvious and allows them to interpret the paintings in different ways. Much of my work continues to be centered on people, particularly their inner world. While I gravitated toward more profound, “in your face” psychological portraits in my early work, my more recent paintings tend to strike a lighter note. I bring my love of music into my “Musicians” series and try to respond to the common desire to escape the daily grind in my “Among Friends” series. The “Cityscapes” series reflect my fascination with urban life and architecture. When I see certain buildings or urban spaces, I hear the melodies composed of brick and glass, of sinuous shiny metal ducts and rusty pipes - all singing in the key set by weather and light. Cityscapes allow me to capture what I see, hear, and even smell on the streets of Seattle, and to recall my impressions of visits to other places in Europe and in the US.
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