Art should be able to be felt. This requires a special talent from the viewer. Painting is like music, but it can be much more mysterious, because it seems to be real. This book is just an attempt to convey my feelings and thoughts which I wish to share with you. Any work of art is an escape from everyday life. It can give birth to new worlds. Man is always loosing something. He looses a feeling, a loved one leaves this life. All these losses are irretrievable and only art can create the illusion that something remains.

Beauty is a mystery. The ancient African masks, Egyptian pyramids, Greek sculpture - in them are to be found the greatest degree of harmony which stands in mysterious connection to the world of mysticism that so fascinates me. I try to try to express these achievements in my works. I am interested in a combination of conventional and living elements, fictional and real. Composition, colour, texture - I exploit all these in order to move beyond and overcome space.

Art can be alive or dead. If it is alive, it is felt immediately. Michelangelo, Botticelli, Goya - can cause a storm of emotions. El Greco’s paintings, burning like fire, fascinate me...

I spent my childhood close to my dad. Almost all the time I was with him, I was drawing and posing for him. «Compare and choose the better» - that was my dad’s basic principle. When we walked in the garden or in the city, he taught me how to observe nature and he taught me to notice the colours of clouds and the branches of the trees. I have been drawing since early childhood. I still have pictures which I made when I was only one and a half years old. When I was five years old, my father gave me huge sheets of paper, sometimes twice my size. We had to climb a ladder to reach the top. Spread out onto the white palette were different beautiful colors and I was given a big brush. And I painted everything which I wanted to. They were mostly queens and still lifes. Sometimes, I consulted with my dad. «Would a green or blue background make this a better figure?» «Perhaps all should be encircled in black?»

When I was little, my mother often took me to the theatre. The Mariinsky Theatre, with its curtains, huge wings and orchestra pit, struck me as something extraordinary and mystical. Sometimes I was permitted to sit on stage even during a performance! I hid behind some of the scenery, looking at the actors and the audience. Probably for this reason I have always been attracted me to the theatre.

I'm left-handed and carry out life drawing with my left hand. Left-handed artistshanders have been a rarity in the world. The most famous is Leonardo da Vinci. They say that this characteristic is linked with a particular intuitive perception of the world, which 
can express itself in bizarrely creative ways.

The artist always chooses the most appropriate way to carry out his work. In my work, reality is never lost until the end. I conclude with the words of Picasso: «I strive for a deeper similarity, which is more real than reality.»

I do not want to please everybody. I do not always pay attention to what the critics think of me. Some of them are trying to streamline everything, to delineate trends, and compare loans in order to fit me into a schema with other painters. All of this is irrelevant to me. The true artist is guided, first of all, by his own passions, which do not take others into account. Many may think they understand my paintings. In fact, they do not know anything about me.