Heredity, environment, chance
Heredity, environment, chance — these three govern our fates. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa In college I discovered a two-volume edition of Ryunosuke Akutagawa translated into Russian. His stories were so...
View ArticleAn Aged Pinocchio, Ink Drawing
The ink version of an oil painting that has a story behind it. Click here to read it.
View ArticleAn Aged Pinocchio Who Never Became a Real Boy
We’ve all had dreams that never came true, and now those little dreamers can still be found in all of us, in various stages of decomposition. Some of those inner little dreamers survive long enough to...
View ArticleBirth of Athena
As a teenager my interest shifted towards fantasy pictures. Books on Greek history and mythology challenged my imagination. Athena was born out of Zeus’s head after Zeus swallowed her pregnant mother,...
View ArticleAcacia by the Creek at Sunset
Since I was mostly painting after school hours, the earliest I could set up my easel outside the village was about four in the afternoon. This often meant I would catch the sunset and wind up redoing...
View ArticleEnchanted Woods with Fighting Trees
This particular edge of the woods may have appeared magical, but it didn’t feel friendly at all. The day was windy and wet, with some occasional sun. The trees on the opposite sides of the path swayed...
View ArticleStar Cat
In the middle of a harsh Siberia winter I was driven to make this nostalgic fantasy picture of a cat staring at a starry summer sky from the roof of my old house in Ukraine. Growing up I used to sit on...
View ArticleIrina Davidova
A good friend from college days, looking at my drawings in my old house. We were just friends.
View ArticleKogalym: Siberian Town in Winter
A view from the window of my studio. It was just a room in a barrack, similar to the ones next to me. The barracks were divided into small apartments for the workers. After a couple of months of trying...
View ArticleGirl with Peach
“Girl with Peaches” is a famous impressionist portrait by the Russian artist Valentin Serov, painted in 1887. That was 30 years before the Great October Socialist Revolution. I drew this picture 65...
View ArticleNatasha’s Dream: Colors of Her Future
I wonder where she is now, on what continent and on which side of the Atlantic Ocean or the Equator. We were planning to get married. I drew a sketch of her taking a nap and soon turned it into a...
View ArticleSelf Portrait as a Teenager
Drawn at about 18, when my head was filled with little other than hormones and romance. If only I could go back and change something in that past, I’d change the haircut.
View ArticleFarm by the River; Reflections
Alternative title – Little House on the Ukrainian Prairie
View ArticleSiberian Carpenter of German Extraction
At the beginning of World War II Stalin exiled thousands of ethnic German families living in the European areas of the USSR to Central Asia, Kazakhstan, and Siberia. He was born in such a family...
View ArticleStill Life: Lilacs In Starlight
Lilacs on the window Sill at night, lit up by the stars and city lights.
View ArticleYounger Sister Katia
She was probably 14 at the time. Defiant, dreamy, romantic, and believing in magic.
View ArticleVika H.
My college girlfriend. She tore up all of my drawings of her when we broke up; this was the only one that miraculously survived.
View ArticleAfter the Rain
The moment when darkness and gloom are going away and the sun rays, one at a time, light up a cleaner and fresher world.
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