What about an art? Probably I'm not an artist - just a musician without a voice. And what I'm using for singing - paint and canvas. It's pretty much like singing. Sing a song when you want, when it's singing itself, when your voice is just following the inner melody. That's an Art what I call it. . . . . . About an inspiration. Art is very personal thing. Artwork, being inspired of something, could touch or induce a personal response in someone, and who knows will it be related to the source inspiration.
My latest works are primarily much more abstract, sometimes absolutely abstract. This character of my painting doesn't depend of what I like or what I don't like in art. I'm not a special fan of abtract art or realism, but I hate statements, programs and manifests in art. It goes as it goes, or at least it should.
If you ask me what style or the direction my paintings belong to, the question doesn't make much sense to me. Directions and styles are just labels or stamps which help dealers to pack and sell art. I like such words as Realism, Surrealism, Abstract, Inspiration and so on. But these are only words and I'm not good enough at describing my artwork.
You'll see some of my explanations beside my artworks - don't judge them too severely - I'm not a writer. That's why sometimes, I use fragments from the texts of my favourite authors (Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll and other) to illustrate my paintings and drawings. I found such a method very helpful.
My work centers on things which are usually invisible, but play a role not less important than visual shapes and forms do. While most would consider my creation is anything except realistic, I find that it is realism; as it is in its true, original meaning - to present an existence.
There are two components in artwork - plastic and literature. And the best way in art - is to blend them into good compound. The lack or absence of plastic makes an artwork something simular to graphic description, chart, makes it dull. There's no music of line, no playing of colour chords in a piece of art without plastic. If you try to avoid the literature part, the artwork certainly become a kind of ornament, beautiful, may be, but mute. Ornament, how beautiful it could be - never tells us anything. Life is abstract only if you don't look with interest.
Anything what is drawn or painted becomes a symbol. Symbols begin to create their own patterns and textures, developing into the matter of painting. Vibrant colors begin to shine through the application of many thin layers of transparent paint.
I consider canvas or paper as alive matter. The task is not in filling the space of canvas with colors professionally. It is much more sophisticted and at the same time simpler. Do you feel the vibration and inner motion of the color mass?
When you are tuning in to inspiration, the smell of the oil, the feeling of the pencil and vibrating shining of paper or canvas - the process becomes meditation. The signs of the reality surrounding you dim, melt, vanish. They don't affect you anymore. You and paper or canvas are the parts of a new world, new cosmos.
I was always fascinated by light, fire. There's something magnetic in it. And I know it is impossible to express it graphically, because of the difference of the contrast ratios between the colours in nature and on the art surface (paper or canvas). But the artist wouldn't be an arist if he didn't try. And I try one time after another to get the canvas to shine.
I've mentioned already - the light is a very difficult substance to express it graphically. Because in nature the contrast between the lightest and the darkest spot of the visible picture is in several times bigger than the contrast between white and black on a paper or canvas. That's why artist learns how to operate with the correlations between colours with proportions of light and dark masses. Artist not only paints, but also applies to the viewer's psychology, people's visual experience, to the conceptual cliches.
When I studied Art in the Art School, my God in painting was Clode Monet. Monet's works are quintessential painting. But the drawing in his works is disappeared, melted under the moving masses of colours. I still love his paintings, but since then I've passed through the passion to Pavel Filonov's Art with a strong graphic discipline, I opened Bruegel's paintings in which colour and line work together in a very natural way. They are only two masters I'm pointing on as great example of coloristic and graphic thinking, but the list is endless. Graphic is strong part of me and it appears in every work.
Painting or graphic, as a musical opus should have the tune, rythm, mood, tone and content. Also paintings could be different in genre. There are a lot of genres in visual art, like in music, in literature or cinematography: action, thriller, comedy, love story and so on.
Now about the extemporaneous art and well planned art. Some genres require a good developed plan ahead, some are instant improvisations. Some people say art must be spontaneous, that any planning just kills art, artist has to forget what his hands are doing, and the best way is to make art unconsciously. Yes, there is such way, but I have two notices. First, an improvisations is better if the artist's masterliness is higher. Nobody will listen jazz improvising by a roockey - people prefer master's playing. Second, Well planned, carefully built art didn't die. It is still in demand, and still isn't discovered completely.
I paint what I like and I like what I paint. While playing with the colors on the palette, listen to the music.

Oleg Lipchenko.