Sasha Bob: “I do not want to be the bearer of vanity to the canvas”.

He appreciates the most freedom in creativity; experimenting constantly, using different techniques, colours and storylines, he makes bright, eccentric paintings. The main thing is to enjoy what you do, Sasha Bob says.

He began to paint from childhood. At first, it was facilitated by his father, who painted very well, although he did not have any special training. Then he went to an art studio, where qualified teachers taught the teenager the laws of classical art. Strictly following them, he felt could achieve a similarity in his own style. But is this the main thing in art?

Grown up, Sasha Bob managed to break all the canons and create works marked with the seal of his own personality.

- They say that an artist can be recognized even in his childhood, which fully applies to you. Did your father really teach you the first lessons?

 - He rather gave the first impetus to me. My father worked as a policeman, and when he returned from his service, I ran to him with a piece of paper and a pencil - I asked to draw a police car. I was struck by the fact that in literally thirty seconds a police UAZ appeared in a 3D image on a piece of paper - just like a real one. I also wanted to learn to do this, trying, trying and trying constantly…

 Later, my father told me how tired he was from his service and just wiped out by exhaustion, and at one or two in the morning he woke up because of me, a three year old boy, shaking his arm. Like, get up, let's go to draw. We went to the nursery, dad turned on the table lamp and put a piece of paper. I was drawing, and my father was sleeping sitting beside me.

- What were you drawing? Probably like all the boys, tanks and planes?

 - I really liked to depict a city with roads: cars driving, people gong. I was drawing a peaceful and quiet life.

 - But where did you get the basic knowledge, the basics of visual literacy?

 - Later, my father took me to an art studio, where I received the necessary basics (colour theory, perspective, etc.), nothing else is needed. I am convinced that studying at art institutes and academies is a double-edged sword. Firstly, the knowledge that a student gets from them for several years can be obtained in a workshop from a good mentor in four months.

 But the saddest thing is that our system of art education is still completely Soviet. People are simply broken. I know one well-known artist who could not paint at all after the academy for seven years. He said: “They broke me. I want to express myself and I paint what the teachers had been telling me to for five years. In another way, I just can’t do it in other way. Everything in me was cut off, killed. ”

 To start painting again, people are disconnected from the whole world for two or three years: no a phone, no a TV, they go inside in order to return to their previous state. Some can do it, and thousands of others just disappear somewhere.

 - Is there someone you have met, that really changed you?

 - Yes, there is such a person. I’ve been painting for twenty years, but I haven’t shown my work to anyone and haven’t spoken to anyone about them. Then I met a girl who became my wife later. It was she who was my first connoisseur, and still is. There is not a single picture of mine that Marina would not approve or criticize. She guides me and makes suggestions. We even go en plein air (painting outside) together.

- You were born and live in Ukraine. How much do you consider yourself a Ukrainian artist?

- I am Ukrainian in every cell of my body and every emotion in my head. But painting ... It has no nationality. Yes, I agree: there are topics that should not be dealt with during difficult times for the country, although, again, there is no absolute taboo; no one but yourself sets the frames.

- That is, you want to say that your work lacks a national component? But what about paintings such as “Bogdan Khmelnitsky”, “Danila Galitsky” or women in embroidered shirts?

 - “Khmelnitsky” was written after a walk in the city center, where there is a monument to Bogdan. I did not paint it to express some of my views and beliefs, it was just an interesting image. The same applies to other works. There is no politics in my paintings. With all due respect to artists who touch on social topics, I’ll never take up such a thing. This is not a piece of art for me. I do not want to be the bearer of vanity on the canvas.

 - You stayed living in your hometown. Didn't you want to travel somewhere, to see other places?

- Yes, I did. But I don’t leave permanently, I go to some other country for six months or a year. For example, to Cambodia. I would pick up paints and canvases, take the family, rent a house on the beach and just paint. But then I would certainly return home.

- Why to Cambodia?

 -  Because everything is still real there. Wild, virgin nature, open and indigenous people.

- Do you like nature? It's not noticeable in your paintings, there are practically no landscapes.

- Nature ... How I can explain this to you ... I don’t feel it in painting. I  won’t probably even paint a simple tree, because I don’t feel it. No, of course, I can portray it. But it will be boring, like in all other works.

 - How is it, not boring?

 - To make this landscape with three colours, a palette knife and a spatula. The way only you can do it. Then it will be interesting.

- You have an avant-garde painting style, a unique technique. Have you already determined what kind of style it is, at least for yourself?

- The only thing I can say for sure that it is figurative. As for a more precise terminology, I am generally against labels. How can I be decomposed into some subcategories and directions if I do not have a link to any school? I did not learn from any master in order to adopt his style. This is all the result of my experiments, hundreds of cans of spoiled paint and tens of meters of used canvases.

 - But probably, there are still artists that you like. Whose work would you like to hang at home on your wall?

 - Of course, there are. At one time, I even wanted to collect paintings of my compatriots, while there is such an opportunity (in ten years, the prices for them will already be beyond the limits). But I will not hang any of these paintings on my wall to look at it every day, the contemplation of someone else's work is very distracting. For a reason many artists, while preparing for a serious personal exhibition, do not to galleries or museums at all. Because looking at someone else's work, you lose your way, not wanting it yourself; all your reference points are confused. You looked and you liked it. "I want to do the same". You start to improve something in your own paintings, but in the end it leads you to such wilds from which you need to return urgently, because it is not yours, someone else came up with it.

 - What feelings does the artist experience while working? What makes him create?

 - What makes you create? Euphoria that can not be compared with anything. Rapture, joy, glee when you finished your work, and you yourself like it. I have not tried drugs, but probably this is something very similar.

- Do you create for yourself or for others? In other words, if you started the picture, but you feel that the viewer will not perceive it now, will you continue?

 - I paint for myself only. And I don’t care how critics evaluate it. Some will come and say that it is good. Others will say that it is bad.

- Does it work to write on order?

 - Probably everyone would like to learn how to write for sale. But I don’t understand how you can do something that doesn’t catch you, so I don’t even dare to try. Although the orders are different. For example, if a person says: “Paint me a pirate”, and at the same time he does not put forward any specific requirements, I will agree to such work. But if the customer has his own wishes regarding colour, shape, etc.  I won’t even start.

 In general, when I get down to work, I don’t even do preliminary sketches, and I don’t even know what I’ll be portraying. Otherwise, it will not be interesting for me to work.

 Images come spontaneously when the paint is already filled. They appear spontaneously. Therefore, I do not bother, I know that everything will work out by itself. In fact, all the plots, faces, poses that I paint are emotions that I accumulate in myself: the book I read the day before, the movie I watched, the story I heard, all this transforms, creating some kind of images.

 - How long does it take to create one such picture?

 - I am an impatient person. I do not like to work on a picture for more than two days, and even that is a lot. I try to do everything at once. As a rule, I start in the morning. I put the primed canvas on the floor and start to fill the texture with wet paints. Since acrylic dries very quickly, literally in half an hour I calmly paint a picture. Unfortunately, oil does not give such an opportunity, although I have grandiose plans for it. But for now it's acrylic.

 - Does it happen that you don't like the finished work initially or you cease to like after some time?

 - Of course, it does. Today I like the work, but in a month ... no, not in a month - in a year you look at it, and you want to prime it. But more often the opposite happens, at first you don’t like the result at all. But you do not rush to overlap. And after a few months you open it: “Well, yes, this is a cool work!” I will say more: as practice has shown, those paintings that I initially did not really like are sold primarily.

- Is it hard to separate with your works?

 - At first it was hard, I even tried to hold on to some paintings. It seems that they fetch a good amount of money, but inside you something resists. You understand that you will give this thing to a private collection, and no one else will see it. But you want to take it to some exhibitions, show it to people.

 Or you give a picture at a price that is significantly lower than the real one, and you yourself understand this. And after a couple of weeks there is a buyer who is ready to give the amount for which you initially evaluated your work. I’m not sorry for the money, but I understand that I was in a hurry …

- Did you try to make copies?

 - I simply cannot physically repeat my work, because these things are done spontaneously. I repeat: I never sketch, never draw sketches. The image appears by itself. And you can’t postpone it. It will not work tomorrow to do what I wanted to draw today, tomorrow it will be different. In fact, every missed day is a lost picture, unpainted masterpiece.

 - In your opinion, can the life of an artist be called happy?

 - Yes, if you found your way, if you create in one breath, and more and more things appear . Then you are happy ...