I grew up a free spirit, unfettered from religious, national or traditionalistic imperatives. As for myself, cultures of the world were as equaly acceptable as that of my own. My need for spirituality (and thus the understanding of religion) was developing through practicing art, studying its history and human psyche. Like the socialutopists have always used to, I also believe in the world of social justice, small class differences, equal educational opportunities for everybody and efficient health care and legal systems. I was born in a country which, aside with all the flaws of its system, firmly stuck to such a course (but unfortunatelly never got any chance to reach the final point, unlike the Scandinavian countries for instance). My mother was a social worker, my father was a union official, and both were dedicated to work with people. Countless life stories used to come and pass through our home every single day. Tragedies, comedies, and even surreal situations worthy of Monty Pythons, not much different from some movie scenarios dreamed in a couple of hours, stories that depict the true nature of heart and mind. And so since the childhood it has become my habit to pay attention on whatever happens to people and observe a wide spectrum of their responses and reactions, a wide spectrum of circumstances life brings. As time was passing by, I was more and more occupied by the questions of human psyche and it was only my passion for art that prevented psychology from becoming my vocation (yes, a shrink was the first choice). Art is indeed a print of our soul, visible signature of what we carry inside and what is human.
We come as a unique product of evolution with the ability to think in abstract or surreal manner, which is controlled from the most powerful cosmic creation, our cerebral cortex. History of the mankind comprises many examples of great civilizations that rose and fell (mainly due to their own decadence), the diseases of which were a mere product of disbalance between the cortex and the lower brain regions inherited through evolution. Everything we do is a pure consequence of heaven and hell in our minds, if you don’t believe this, just turn around yourself, that will do. Let those stubborn ones switch on their TVs.
The brain too has its own world within which it is autonomous and makes decisions by itself about the shows it will perform in the nighttime. Its true nature is located in the Dreamland, where incredible stories of endless creativity are composed every day and everything is permitted. The Dreamland Production is run by editors of all the brain regions, and their activity is a product of eternal confrontation between Id, Ego and Superego, controversial like the art of decadence. All this shapes one amaizing and frightening world which struggles to come out through my pencil and appear on a sheet of paper.
For a long time already, we have been trying to see through dreams, we explain them, make science or pseudoscience of them, attribute them different meanings either symbolic or precognitive, but still keep being equally far away from the answer nonetheless. By exploring the matrix with such a chaotic scheme, we reach the boundaries of mistery, the line beyond which we certainly should not travel.
We have always converted dreams into symbols, symbols into stories, stories into myths and sagas. Our creativity and capacity even to think beyond reality come from our ability to dream. Each of our deeds is predetermined in our dreams. Can you assume anything more important than that? Perhaps I could.
We live surrounded by figuration, we dream figuratively, and therefore it makes sense that the symbol which appears most in our dreams is also figurative. It is the woman. The symbol of woman is universal, omnipresent, necessery and desired. As men, we experience the woman as mother, wife, mistress, sister, friend and foe (women experience this in slightly different manner). We scream when we leave her body and for entire our life we try to return inside (at least most of us). Women run our lives consciously or unconsciously, they represent our most important psychological component (Freud set the scientific foundations of psychoanalyses based on human sexuality exclusively besause of the atmosphere of decadence, the times of curiosity and experimenting). The woman has always been the symbol of generation, birth and creation, so that she was given a divine status and celebrated in some prechristian religions and cultures as such. So it was the need to find the answers to universal questions through the woman’s figure that formed the aestetics of the art of decadence, placing the woman in focus where she transforms into a symbol of certain psychological aspect, from angel to demon, and where I seek for my own expression within the mystic land of dreams, dwelling in The Twilight Zone betwen symbolic ans surreal.
The aesthetics of organic and Art Nouveau elements which I use in my work emphasize my desire to approach more closely to the very source of creation of life, organic form and nature itself. DNA strings of all living creatures become a medium shaped by stylizied ornaments from which the very existance originates. The nexus between the spiritual and scientific approach has been established because science and art are not adversaries standing confronted one against another, but just two divergent ways of seeking answers on the same questions.
Through my drawings I am trying to create my own tranquility place (a working title of the painting from which everything started), a meditative space where familiar figuration of undestructable beauty resides, surrounded by demons from Id in the harmony of space and time, heaven and hell. It is the contradiction of the contents described hereabove which unambigiously symboliyzes the need for coexistence of opposite forces for the purpose of attaining the common goal. Survival. And nature, as supreme act of creation, shows us the way how.