Instead of speaking about my art in general, I would rather concentrate on a few important issues, the ones I see as biggest threats to a proper understanding of my work.
1) SUBJECT. After presentations of my work I often hear questions: What does this painting mean? or What do you want to say with this painting? Well, I would like to give a clear answer: nothing. Or, rather, nothing that can be expressed in words. Visual art is beyond the world of words and ideas. Like music or dance, it has its own ways of expressing. I think that people who attempt to use their art as a way of nearly verbal communication should write a book instead. My paintings are here to please your eyes, not to provoke your brain activity. Expressing big ideas is domain of esthetically unimaginative persons. I gave up the originality of ideas for the originality of composition, colours and lines, which represent my personality very well.
2) STYLE. I work in the style of alla prima, which means I am not covering the cardboard with infinite layers of paint, but rather trying to include the background and structure of the cardboard in the final piece. I am sure that sometimes less means more.
3) MATERIAL. Most people connect oil paintings with canvas. Although I sometimes work on this material, I prefer cardboard for two reasons: special surface that appeals to me and gives me the possibility to play with the background and, secondly, easiness of preparation. But even if cardboard had been an inferior material, I would defend its use because an artist should never rely on the quality of his canvas, paints or brushes, but entirely on his talent. However, I can name some famous artists of the past who were also fond of the cardboard: H.T.Lautrec, Degas, Gaugain
4) WORKING IN PLEIN AIR. By working in plein air I mean painting the real subject in the real time. This excludes working from memory, photography, imagination or even my own sketches. We cannot step twice in the same river not only the exterior conditions (light, weather, objects in the scenery) change very quickly, but my inner mood is also different every day, every hour. I never add anything after the paining is done, which usually takes me about an hour. My work method is therefore different from most of the so called plein-air painters, who work mainly from a photo, during a long time enough to make it look perfect and realistic. To me, this is cheating of the customers who, instead of a lively, unrepeatable catch of a disappearing moment, get a sterile child of the studio. What makes such painting unique when you know that the artist can sit again under his electric light and make another identical one?