On the day I was born, there was no thunder and lightning (where would they come from in the middle of January?), no comet passing over the Earth, no volcanic eruption, tsunami or eclipse. In short, no omens happened. Just an ordinary winter frosty day. Which was a cause of youthful angst and frustration, but gradually ceased to matter.
As a kid, I spent a lot of time at my mom's parents' house, like many of my peers. While the parents were at work, grandparents took over the care of the children. My grandfather painted. When I was born, he had no legs. He got frostbite in the war, gangrene. My grandfather fought for seven years and came back on his own two, but he lost them later. I remember him on a homemade wheelchair with big bicycle wheels. I remember asking him to let me ride it. I also remember that some very creative people came to visit my grandfather: artists, poets, bards. Once there was a gypsy ensemble. I don't know where all these treasures came from in our small village. But they periodically appeared, and my grandfather recorded on a small reel-to-reel tape recorder how they read their poems, sang their songs. He recorded me too. I used to tell all of Chukovsky by heart with rapt attention.
Grandpa would record my voice on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. And he would explain painting to me. He told me about color and its perception, about perspective, about composition and the golden ratio. Anatomy and proportions. About the process of fine art itself. I also asked my grandfather to teach me how to draw a horse. For some reason, it was a horse that I wanted to draw myself. He promised, but he started to get sick, stopped getting out of bed, his stumps bled (my grandmother slept on that bed for a long time, and when she changed the laundry, I saw traces of blood on the upholstery, which we could not clean). What remained were his paints, his brushes, his primed watercolor paper. A wooden suitcase he made himself for going out to sketch. And then I realized that something not material remained - an attitude to creativity, a craving for art.... An understanding of the creative process as labor. And today for me any creativity consists of one percent of inspiration, and the rest is long, painstaking work, sometimes agonizing, always tense and exhausting. I don't know if it's from my grandfather or my own experience
So it turns out that since I was a kid, I've been drawing. Not regularly, every now and then. And then came the pandemic and general self-isolation. Two months of being confined to four walls was a great launching pad for more serious painting. I read books, watched video tutorials, and, of course, practiced-practiced-practiced. I'd get up with the sun and paint until it went down. And the longer the daylight hours became, the harder it was to put away the brushes and palette. Now life is gradually leveling out, workdays are returning to the usual rut; but every free minute I get up at the easel, or sit at the table, with brushes or pencil, with canvas or paper, with a plan or completely without it. For some reason it has become very necessary to dirty the surface, to fill the space, to look for expressive techniques. And although the result is often disappointing, the process itself immerses you in another dimension, changes your consciousness, cleanses and empties you, exhausts you and gives you inexpressible pleasure.
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