Question: Were you interested in anything else except painting? In which way did this occupation affect your creativity?
Answer: Yes, I went to school at the Turkestan military district for the officers’ children. There a lot of time was given to military training: an obstacle course, a shooting range, parade drill, fire drill which I studied well. It is like the Suvorov Military School, a difference only is that after studies pupils went home instead of barracks. But the program was the same. At school we prepared also in mountains for mountain infantry, I started mountaineering there. Many children entered then the mountain-infantry general school. At school I drew fighting leaflet, wall newspapers … As a result I became more disciplined, accurate, went to the swimming pool in the Army Sport club every morning. Art and sport are links of the one chain. It is necessary to have the big physical strength for being involved in the art; that’s the same for both the sculpture and the painting.
Question: What teachers, events, countries, meetings did leave a trace in your creative biography?
Answer: I was acquainted with Svinjin who graduated from the Muhinsky art school (Baron Steglits School). In Central Asia he set monuments; he is one of the best artists of the twentieth century. I like Evgenie Vuchetich's works very much; his sculpture the Mother Motherland looks from any turn differently, from any foreshortening it is beautiful, picturesque. In his works the fascists was stricken by Teutonic sword, which is the tool of Germans. His sculptures in size is 110 meters (the greatest in the world) as a skyscraper, it is amazing because of the scales and acceleration. I like art of Germany very much, through the German art the Russian academic school grew. Professors of Dusseldorf School and German art of printing drawing exerted an important influence on the Russian art.
Question: What helps or stirs you most of all in your work? And how have you overcome or are going to overcome these obstacles?
Answer: Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) helps very much, it gives a prayerful condition. The same prayer occurs in the painting. In a picture there is the same liturgy, but it is only expressed by colour. Especially it is felt when I draw any themes of a religious order. Also the beloved person helps, who divides with you one space. It is better even to say “inspires”, she is a Muse, an inspirer. A psychological factor strongly distracts and disturbs to create, sort out one's relationship with relatives, for example. Thank God, in my life there has come the new period, after holy wedding I see and I feel pleasure of life, what I have never had. It is a pleasure of human warmth, participation.
Question: What plots do you represent in the pictures?
Answer: That what excites me, what is close to me on perception of the world. What is not indifferent. I represent in the pictures what I wish to express by means of painting language. It seems to me there are signs which specify in a certain theme as I understand it. There are artists who give a great attention to salon painting and forget that in the art it is necessary to show you own opinion, to interpret and represent the reality in your own way. People became propertied class’s servants in the painting, they use proved motives, hits which are well sold. But behind hits there is emptiness. And it’s even worse when as sale motives they sale copies from past hits. Art topics are the east first of all. There I have spent the most part of my life, there I was born and grew up. The best year of human life, the childhood, I spent in the east. Marina, sea motive goes from my father. The sea for father is the incomprehensible element; the father was engaged in the sea in professional way as the military officer. I always wished to live in a city near the sea, even near the cold sea, next to live element where are live organisms, fish, seagulls … It is the nature of the widest format, it is possible to be engaged in only sea whole life.
Question: What style or genre do you prefer?
Answer: I like the academic school very much, that school which was created, generated, collected by the Russian Itinerants. There were 13, those who given up the academy and did not begin to write a degree work on an evangelical bible plot. Kramsky was among them. I like him because he wrote those plots which he considered expression of the time. He wrote those plots which excited him. My favourite style in the painting is an academic style, the Russian academic school of the beginning of the century. As for abstract it is possible to compare it with music of a certain genre. For example, in music there is a symphony, jazz, rock. Abstract is jazz, such music is not close to me, it is a motley crew and it is possible to get tired of it … As well about abstract. Both jazz and abstract appeared in the twentieth century. Music and painting here is as links of the one chain; if you love jazz it means that you love abstract.
Question: What do you succeed in better?
Answer: I succeed in drawing from life. That means that I set a painter's case, I set a canvas and simply draw, draw from life very quickly and very well. But I try to go not by the way of the least resistance. I try not to copy from life, but to create my own fairy tale. The open-air freshens, but it can get you drunk greedily, many galleries are filled by an open-air but these are incomplete things, pictures. The picture from a capital letter is not an open-air it is much more. For example Ivanov had been drawing «Appearance of Christ before people» during 30 years; he created for it more than 400 sketches. Or another example: Vasnetsov also drew a lot of sketches for the picture «Bogatyrs» [bogatyr was a medieval epic hero, heroic warrior, rus витязь, богатырь] he drew every small petal, every floret, and every hoof … These were sketches for the picture from which one picture was drown. Or an example of Surikov who drew portraits of 40 persons for the picture «Morning of the execution of the revolting Streltsy». He collected them in one composition. This is work under the picture: not only sketches, but sketches for a picture. From the other side if you don’t write for a picture from life you get a camouflage fairy tale, a surface one. For any good picture it is necessary to draw sketches from life in order to get a life picture, it gives vivacity … It is a classical canon of implementation: you need to work for a picture with so-called working material.
Question: What human quality is the most important at creation of a work of art (concentration, patience, desire, awe, etc.)?
Answer: The most important human quality for the artist is patience, a tendency to the purpose, an aspiration to achieve a desirable thing in a picture by all means. The artist should be the balanced person; he should be engaged only in one, not be split up, but concentrated in one. For any artist to « acquire a good eye » is very important; it cannot achieve at once, it is necessary to work for years. As a result the artist can perceive everything professionally as a whole and while drawing a picture he will put away all superfluous, will generalize, mark or strengthen something. Because of it the form becomes more volumetric. The integral wide perception, not small things are important for the artist. It is important when the artist sees and uses the big form but only slightly corrects the details. It is very important when the person can see a picture in sketches in a format; imagine it in a head completely and entirely.
Question: What is your personal contribution to art?
Answer: Now it is difficult to say what is my contribution to art and what is not a contribution. Only time can detect it. Moreover the scale of the human life is considered for a moment. During lifetime of Van Gogh nobody bought his painting except his brother Teo, but time passed and his pictures are sold for many millions dollars. Van Gogh was an integral, obsessed person; he was engaged only in painting. He did not run on benches, did not spoil his hand on a bench because his brother provided him with everything, and he only drew. He wrote wholly as his art perception told him and that’s why he became the great artist of the 20 centuries. Van Gogh was appreciated as genius only in 30 years after his death. Such occurs to the artist if relatives help him; his skill comes with the passing of the years. But with it he is not engaged in a bench or popular print copying, but he draws what touches, excites, commoves him.
Question: What do you expect from your work? What is your purpose?
Answer: I wish to express my perception of the world by means of painting language, to express my general understanding of the human factor in the pictures in order to read them as a sign. If we take the great artists of the twentieth century, for example, we can find at works of each one a sign work which remains in the history of the mankind. They became emblematic artists after their death, and during lifetime they were simple people as everybody, went along the same streets, drank the same water, ate the same bread, and looked at the same sky.
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