Acrylic on canvas 30*40 cm «Summer Sketch No. 20»
My Summer Sketches are quick paintings, created mostly from photographs, memories, and impressions I collect along the way.This summer was a long journey for me. I traveled to Russia through Poland, and later spent some time in Turkey. Most importantly, I visited many of my relatives. My children saw their grandmother and grandfather, my sisters, their cousins, nieces and nephews. It was a beautiful, intense, very warm time, the kind of summer that leaves hundreds of little memories behind.
I was born in a tiny Russian town of about 10,000 people, surrounded by swamps, forests, fields, lakes, and villages.And when I say “village,” I don’t mean the kind of village I see around me now in Belgium. Some villages there are surrounded by kilometers of forest and fields and may have only a handful of houses sometimes just one or two families living close to each other. People help one another because, in a way, they really do live like one large family.
Life there is simple. You need a car because everything is far away. There are no perfectly trimmed lawns stretching from one garden to another. You step outside and there is a field. Then a forest. Then another field. Somewhere beyond it, a lake.
People love nature there, and somehow it feels as though nature loves them back.
There are countless lakes, marshes, quiet backwaters and ponds. And, of course, water lilies.Perhaps this is why there have always been so many water lilies in my paintings.Even when I was only beginning to paint seriously, I created a separate collection of water lilies on my website. Not because I admire Monet and want to repeat what he did ,although, of course, I admire him ,but because water lilies belong to my own memories. They were simply always around me.And they are something I miss deeply.There is a small pond near the street where I live now. Carp swim there, and water lilies grow on the surface. For almost ten years, my children and I have been walking there to feed the fish.We feed the carp, look at the lilies, listen to the water , and for a moment, life slows down.And suddenly I am somewhere between my life now and my childhood.Only the frogs are missing.Those loud summer frogs that used to croak everywhere around the ponds and marshes.
For a few minutes, there is this strange, comforting feeling that you have returned home. That the world is quiet. That you are safe. And that somehow, everything is going to be all right.I wish you the ability to find this feeling wherever life takes you ,a feeling of home, peace, and calm.
