Author of the article: Pavel Lila
Never in his life had Alexei given rise to suggestion that he is in the dark about the idea that artists in the world are in number probably not less than the number of cars in Moscow.
What is actually magnificent in view of this fact that he feels nothing limiting or suppressing him.
Put it otherwise, all advantages would be possible as if he could be a single artist in the world, Alexei managed to reserve for himself. Meaning, no specialty at all. No shelter, neither in genre nor in style. Unconditioned openness of sight, just looking all around.
Contrariwise, all the advantages, not suppressing at all but promoting and adding wings to him, relating great variety of gains of other painters, Alexei also has managed to keep with himself… That is to say, he feels all colorific performances of others as there is nothing for it but like a favorable and prosperous wind that makes him just free for creating his own colorific oeuvres.
Specific hygiene and special way of artistic performance – he arranged them in such a way that standstill, castration, or stillbirth become impossible just in view of his approach and his way of working. His method is peculiar because it exclude the conditions themselves and prerequisites for uprising something like that.
It seems like refreshing and vivifying wind of camping-ground breezes and blows off susception and acting every time whenever he takes it in hand.
Then we could call Alexei’s method of working rather sly, if we would consider it in relation to others methods, far more widespread ways of representation of the surrounding. If we regard the method itself in its essence, the situation is opposite, we can easily see simplicity in it at the extent much higher than one could ordinarily expect…
Naturally, this method, which seems to be conventionally-sly and not without concealed mystique, is actually an unsophisticated, penny-plain one that not guarantees that any attempt to produce something, will turn about a wonderful picture. Instead, the method guarantees something that cannot be guaranteed by more convenient and wide-spread methods in themselves, namely, it guarantees that an outstanding picture will appear for sure, if not this time but next time, without fail.
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The majority of people when they came to know some details and specifics would prefer disbelieve in the fact that Alexei produces his pictures (more precisely, he promotes their creation). Or even if somebody from public can believe in it (for example, when falling for the first wave of confidence while communicating with him), he will lose this belief very soon and forget it quickly. That means that everybody strives to throw off a received performance, being suppressed by internal pressure and influenced by his own individual features. This occurs because many people esteem their own experience from previous life, and art ideas, and their suggestions about what can happen and cannot happen. Instead of snatching at a chance to develop this experience and making it deeper and more profound, people conserve it and hence stop themselves in development. In such a way, they make their own “experience” stagnated too soon by protecting it from “treats” and “challenges”, but as a matter of fact they just protect narrow-mindedness in their creative work and avoid any possible amplification and deepening.
The challenge-taking method of Alexei assaults upon fortresses and gets mountains similar to those reached by other artists but using another approach and going along another way, almost from opposite side. Approach to these mountains, in a manner of speaking, is made from a route absolutely different from those along which have gone general mutations of expressiveness in painting if we consider them in linearly-passing through history, while these were as a result of goal-seeking efforts of first pathfinders and innovators which eagerly tried to solve their tasks.
One cay say that the method put in practice by Alexei introduces the way of transference, to the maximum possible extent, of the entire base of potential artistic success in the field of pure prevision. But if one fails to have a look at pictures he/she could suggest that there is nothing supernatural or miraculous in it: edgy fashions with their allowances and freedom of expressions of any kinds as these existed in the past or are still in use at present, any free of charge is welcomed and admitted. However, in Alexei’s pictures anybody can distinct and can see the objective environment we are deep in every day. We can see it in all its coloristic complicacy and freshness. And even if some people take a look at these pictures it could be too difficult for them to believe that these oeuvres were made in this way but not another, so these people after that fail to believe. Or many of them who believed first, then forgot about all everything very quickly.
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Alexei uses some other methods of portrayal of the surrounding views than those rather few approaches provided in art education generally accepted worldwide.
This art education believes about itself as a universal and almost unique approach to adequate presentation of reality, and broadly speaking, many people who are not sufficiently profound and who are informed too little about this education, share the same ideas about it, and they stick rigidly to this position although they have no good grounds for that.
As a matter of fact, this can be considered as one of many possible approaches. Virtually it combines a peculiar and somewhat ambiguous symbiose of academical west-european system of the New Age with its priority granted to light-and-shade volumetric compositions plus heavily vulgarize “Sezannism”, which as a rule appears itself as coloristic allowances to much greater extend than we could see in “coffee ground” compositions produced by pure devoted scholastic painters from academic school. Despite the fact that Cezanne made his creative feat namely to overcome light-and-shade dualism, by proposing his own approach of all-out composition of color (although without any compromise given to tension and definiteness of shape and volume)… And so this ambiguous symbioses is played off to be as near as the universal and fundamental base of objective imaginative artistry.
Alexei from the very beginning used absolutely another approach to imaging of vicinity. And he honed it to perfection to reach maximum effective elegance.
Retrospectively, if by the time of his intense education and self-education he could go to a traditional artistic school or could take lessons within private tuition, or even educated himself independently all-alone within the framework of traditional painting, it could be just somewhat taking mind off freak.
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Better than many others, Alexei realized how many we have in our hands from the very beginning, and so he started his painting activity in such a way as to minimize the losses in final result.
Primordial entity as he can see it is oversaturated with providence gifts and special coincidences. How should it be not neglected? How should it be not spoiled by his own individual strong-willed artistic action? How should it be implemented best, all these providence advances which preceded this individual intervention; how should all these coincidences be used in most sensitive and responsive way…
Specifically, in direct artistic process primordial entity is underpainting. In Alexei’s method, underpainting, its role and intrinsic meaning are not the same as is meant usually, when it is used as a first stage of a certain planned painting program. Alexei considers the role of underpainting opposite to that usually understood.
Absolutely voluntarily and strictly unintendedly, all colors exist and are spread over canvas as these were put in condition of stopped debauch. The only one condition is absolute nonintervention of the artist in what kind of underpainting will be implemented. Sounds like somewhat uncreated entity that precedes the artistic process itself, like a background on which artistic device is realized. In brief, any uneven and unpurified surface is good for that.
Naturally, underpainting is not made fit to what the artist will make as a future picture. On the contrary, in all its combinations of colors and surface finishing of the Universe underpainting is put first on canvas, before anything that will be displayed later on.
Then, the next stage, something is painted on the fist layer, something is added to it, unobtrusively and accurately put in the bag, another things are remained untouched. Anyway, he follows the policy of minimum intrusion being the main priority. The ideal is to avoid doing anything, not any touch of canvas whatever which is not necessary. That is the approach, where, on the one hand, every touch simultaneously substantiates everything what has been seen in chaos (underpainting), on the other hand, the same touch makes something found in chaos corresponding to that observed in reality, and it finishes chaos of underpainting until making it similar to life.
And here, almost necessarily, with greater or lesser generosity, magic of some coincidences and correspondence starts to work. According to Alexei’s words, and by evidences of those who could monitor and observe with attention the painting process, something happens to this canvas, and extremely fast assistance comes from somewhere. This assistance (with minimum labor contribution of the artist) allows the primary chaos of underpainting to covert very soon in something that becomes distinct enough and well-recognized image of life. That means, now it appears that the artist began on already looking at something else except for underpainting.
“Without relying on something behind reality, I would not be able to create my oeuvre so rapidly” said Alexei when mentioning that incredibly fast-appeared assistance. Owing to that, underpainting chaos, which initially was absolutely non-associated with imagery motive, highly organically and without any coercive actions, converts into something physically convincing and becomes image allowing everybody to feel the air and spirit of the surrounding. This is irrational, magic phenomenon that became the method providing the result. This is something that in some sense, though exceedingly distantly, in some kind similar to systematic descent of sacred fire in Jerusalem that occurs in the day of orthodox Easter.
As to the matter of miracle participated in the creating process, if we could go inside of this process deeper, we should remember that even for certain individual, in come cases, phenomenon of miracle can appear permanently from time to time in any form, that means that this is not miracle itself but the proofing evidence of undisputable lameness and unjustified restraint of our ideas and perceptions with respect to objective laws and manifestation of life.
It seems that the Alexei’s method purely proves things which could be of interest for scientists, if…
…If scientific knowledge in general could not be so split and separated to standalone narrow fields of science.
In conclusion it is noteworthy to mention that any artistic method which is organic for a certain person and in full suitable to the nature of the given human being, so this method inevitably becomes similar to what this person actually is. It could be possible that the Alexei’s method itself will be objectively suitable for anybody else, for another person who by his/her internality meets this method. Possibly, somebody could create pictures (but naturally these pictures will be of another kind). But anyway, any conformity to this method suggests, on the one side, deep selftrust, on the other side, uttermost, spiritual confidence in outward things of the world. Objectively, Alexei’s method gives result only in the presence of these subjective conditions.
Pavel Lila, winter 2009.