We’ve known each other for several years. We’ve worked on some wonderful projects together, and I’ve always admired your courage to look at things from a different perspective. For example, your exhibition When I Close My Eyes I See Blue in the Žitomlin building, which lasted only three days, was visited by over 700 people. You don’t use typical gallery spaces or conventional communication with the audience, do you?
Answer: Well, I love you! Let’s move on to the next question… (laughs)
I believe the audience should always be offered something more, and the element of surprise is important. They should feel comfortable, relaxed, and free to enjoy themselves; to leave the exhibition with a positive emotion that will last, and make them want to come back to the next one with excitement. The audience senses when an artist has invested a lot of effort and love without calculation, and that is the most sincere, unspoken communication between me and the audience—we rejoice together, without the pressure and expectations that a gallery space imposes. I try to stay outside of that system that confines and disciplines me—I don’t navigate well within that kind of influence. Essentially, I’m a big child who never stops playing. I love freedom, spontaneity, and as few rules and restraints as possible.
You work every day. Your studio is a special, magical attic, filled with good energy and bathed in light. In that safe, isolated space, you create works that are personal, emotional, like a kind of abstract intimate diary. What do your canvases actually convey?
I had a strong desire to attend the Academy of Fine Arts because I realized that this is my path, this is who I am: that I can transfer my feelings and emotions onto the canvas. As an artist, I feel that I am constantly changing, searching, and growing. Experience is crucial, as is constant work on oneself. In short, honesty, love, spontaneity, colors, and freedom define me. The style I am developing is a part of me, part of my personal transformations. Everything that affects me personally contributes to the way I express myself. It’s the need to change the space around me and make it alive, vital, dynamic. I am inspired by colors and emotions. The studio is my oasis, peace, universe, love, happiness, dream, moment, beginning, magic—everything is there.
Your paintings are dominated by bold colors, strong, voluminous strokes. The intensity of contrast doesn’t settle, surfaces full of dynamics, joy, conflict open up—everything is filled with ecstatic tension…
Every painting communicates differently with each viewer because everyone’s experience is unique. I leave the story to the viewer because we are all different and perfect just as we are. Each painting is a materialization of the author’s microcosm. The author changes, evolves, and progresses. I don’t believe an artist always paints the same picture, but I do believe that every painting is a different chapter of their life. I don’t start with an idea: if, at that moment, I feel like purple, I begin with it. Then it calls upon another color, and the process begins, sometimes lasting up to a year. When I look at a painting, I always know if it’s finished. I don’t have a favorite color—I love them all and enjoy them. Depending on how I feel, one color may appeal to me more or less in the moment. I try to channel emotions through the colors I use, to create a positive, clear outlook filled with optimism. The process is instinctive, almost carnal. What I carry within me at that moment materializes on the canvas. Free, spontaneous movements that follow the flow and energy of my emotions like a ritual, like a dance that liberates or creates an experiment in colors, always leading to new discoveries of textures, pigments, and color combinations.