My principle of working

There is only one principle taken in account in all of my art doing: There is no previous exact sketch, map or definite precise idea. Instead, I prefer to be free in searching for the right image inside the “empty canvas”.
By exploring many ideas, different forms and shapes at the same time, looking for their hidden links and trying to understand them, I take the enjoyment of the process of creation of the image by it self.

My Historic / Time-correspondence:

Mix of: Botticelli and Kandinsky with Nick Cave & Sonic Youth, that might be about where I want to go...
Starting with Byzantine and Renaissance art, going forward through over: Klimt & Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Chagall plus Russian Avantgarde & Pop Art altogether with music & PoP Culture. There are many sources from where I feed my inspiration

Technique & Materials:

Most often I use acrylic & oil on canvas, but not excluding many different materials such as: pigments, pens, markers, tempera... applications like: insects & bugs, mirrors, metal, wood, paper,... videos & projections, onto the painted canvas, boards, aluminum plates, etc... Once I’ve learned the basics such as drawing and painting all together with my education & work experience in computer graphics, multimedia and interactive design, now I am not afraid to use all that mixed together in my work. I think that one piece can and/or should consist of more than one type of medium and materials.

Form & Content:

Multiple layers of images into one composition while I am trying to figure out how they relate and how can they be assembled into one peace having one common visual message.

Human’s form is in my focus. Peoples shape is definitely one that is most common in our everyday life therefore well accommodated in our subconscious brain where all the emotions get born. That is why human forms are always present in my works. My images are not made in representational manner. Instead of putting up one image that represents this or that specific matter I prefer to play with the uncertainty of the forms and theirs meanings, the transformations of one shape into another, and the free associations that those forms are bringing to viewers minds.
I intent to leave the painting “open” enough for ones perception and translation of its message. It is a question of representing before our eyes in an intuitive way the facts of the interior being. Here I would to mention that I would like to think like: “This bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wonderous worlds I’ve known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there.... The last few steps you have to take alone.” - Shel Silverstein

About my style of painting:

Mix of traditional methods with contemporary and modern way of painting. On a contrary of being afraid of heaving different styles in one painting, I love having all those diametrically contrasted genres mixed up in one piece. What really matters is which emotion and/or which visual message the work evokes in the viewers minds. I try to communicate with one's conscious and subconscious mind on the same level.

Extras:

What is Art?- My attempt on short & rational explanation on this subject matter

Art is the man's activity of making and expressing analyses on it’s own inner-self, often confronted with exterior world and his/her relationships with it. Differently from science, art does not deal with standards and facts and is not expressed in numbers and postulates. It can not be proven with simplified and repetitive experiments, and finally it does not deal only with “what one can see” but also with “what one can feel”. Furthermore art can depend only on one's pure instinct and imagination and that is why it can not be so easily recognized.

About the notion “Art? Art!? Show me one thing that, if you think about it long enough, isn't art!” - This is a notion that we know of for already 100 years. I consider my self a bit more contemporary than a 100 years old idea. I would like to believe that again producing art is having deeper meaning and value than just putting in the gallery whatever found object and claiming that it’s art just because of this notion. Artist should be more responsible and be more represented by his work and not only by his stories and explanations and his intellectual analyses. When Marcel Duchamp put the “pissoar” and made art of it, he was in completely other artistic conditions and he had other motives then those that what we have now. Braking something that has been broken long ago has no meaning any more.

Also, Damien Hirsch & Jeff Koons are phenomenal but too sensational to be followed and repeated. They represent perfectly the time we lived in the past 30 years and they reflect the tragical way of “fall of that civilization”. But, I believe that continuously digging in the same hole has no sense. Therefore artists today must discover their grounds again.

About *isms

In my opinion there is no real necessity of putting things in shelves titled by ‘isms, like: classicism, fauvism, surrealism, post modernism, conceptualism, etc ... *isms, *isms... *isms. The only need of any classification on this matter is to help big traders in art business in the last 100 years up to today’s “bubble in contemporary art” where the “trade & sell” and the “idea” behind are more evaluated then the product it self.
In other words, if we follow the developments in history of art...from Antique Greeks, Renaissance & middle age art ... > with all in between up to > Expressionism > to > Cubism > to > Post-Expressionism > to > Magic realism > to > Minimalism > to > Russian Avangarde > to > Pop Art > to > Abstract > to > Conceptual Art > all up to > ”Out Of Bubble Art” we should end up with ”Make the thing really working out and sh(o)ut up!!!” meaning - take all *ism’s in account and if serves to your ideas you can use every point they have “proved and/or achieved”. Just make your thing really working out.




Vladimir Hristov