THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT FOR THIS SERIES

"THE HARP LISTENER"

I’ve been always impressed by the skill of grand artists - such as Rembrandt, Tintoretto, El Greco - to create a powerful artwork basing just on few lines from the Bible. I analysed composition, sense of color and inner expression of paintings but I did not forget that the basis was a short phrase - "And thus the waters of the Black Sea opened"... Or "And Judith said unto them, Command the gates of the city to be opened unto me, that I may go forth to accomplish the things whereof ye have spoken with me". This super task (to make a simple thing be powerful) stuck in my head in youth until I finally implemented it without wording, being guided by my intuition.

It was 1992, the agony of leviathan, the Soviet Union: empty shops, gloomy agressive rallies on the squares, inflation, ration stamps, million prices for nothings and of course absolutely no job in architecture and design. I used to stay at home for several days, sitting in my parents’ flat full of antique furniture and reading books in the big library. I read Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac again. I ate roasted bread, there was a box of condensed milk and a lot of soviet champagne (it has been quickly sold out right from a truck on the street). It was a wonderful life. Intellectuals in mass emigrated from Russia and perhaps I also had to do that. I read the Bible, the story of David and Saul. After the phrase "And Saul cast the javelin" I closed the old shabby book. "Here are the paints, here is the chance - How long will you wait? - Work. No matter where you are..."

That is how my probably the best painting - "The harp listener" - appeared, and after - "Bird catchers", "Judith morning", "Death of a nomad" and dozens of abstract fraphic papers.