I am a splash. I am an array of words and colors thrown into the air by forces of nature. Seven years ago, the large white stone of my Russianness fell into the motley ocean of American culture. My art education in Russia was solid and bulky, but lacked color. “No imagination allowed until you start painting like Rafael!” my Moscow teacher shouted. “Skills are everything, freedom is a mirage,” my tutors kept telling me. And finally my artistry started to look like an ideal piece of marble with no Michelangelo nearby.
Obviously, something went wrong. My numerous landscapes and still lives were perfect, but deadly boring. My only concern was to oblige my teachers with finely-made traditional paintings and drawings. I was told that all the best in visual arts had already happened and I could only follow the paths of dead geniuses. But the world around me wasn’t dead! It was vibrant, colorful, even overwhelming. Moscow – one of the most extravagant cities in the world – provided me with unrivaled impressions and stunning encounters. Moscow was nothing like a quiet exhibition hall with gloomy, elderly ladies guarding the more elderly artifacts.
Then a miracle happened. Our family immigrated to the USA. The reasons were almost the same that caused my disappointment in my art education – my mother and father were convinced that political life in Russia lacked colors and was gradually becoming more and more like a bleak stone with no Michelangelo nearby.
America was not a simple place to start one’s life anew. We came here with a couple of suitcases, one old easel and no money in our pockets. But what we got upon stepping out of the plane was colors! The sky in California was violet blue, flowers and cacti were blooming all around and people were smiling in every corner of this brave new world. Idyllwild Arts gave me a scholarship and four years of the most versatile art schooling. I tried everything. I felt what real freedom was – a boundless creativity, an unrestricted self-expression, a feast of colors and shapes. The heavy stone of my Russian painting skills drowned here with a big splash. I got interested in fashion – the pinnacle of artistic freedom. The marble of my artistic self became colored – like marble statues of ancient Greece.
Yes, I am a splash. My fashion will be more stunning than Moscow and more diverse than America. I shall conquer the world using colors like Napoleon used his old guard – sending them deep forward, seeing not the enemy line but only the horizon, and not knowing the meaning of the word “defeat”.
I will be in every corner of the world. I will compete with every flower and rival every sunrise. I shall shatter the ground and tear the sky apart.
And everyone, on every seashore and on every mountaintop, will see me.