IMAGE BORN WITH EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE

YURY AVALISHVILI graduated from “The Tbilisi state Academy of Arts”. He is a member of the Union of professional artists of the Russian Federation, a member of the Creative union of artists of Russia and of the International federation of artists. He is the art expert of the association “Arts of all the world nations”, the art expert of the Union of artists of Georgia; the representative and the art expert of ART-ARSI, the center of development of art; the representative and the art expert of “The museum of Modern Renaissance”, Boston, USA; the member of the Advisory council of the Museum of a portrait, Russia, – “The Sight from the third millennium”; the winner of the Gold Brush competition; the winner of the international diploma of the Russian-Italian academy Ferroni. The Yury Avalishvili’s works are in the State museum of arts, Georgia, in the National museum of Georgia; in the National gallery of Armenia; in the Odessa state museum of Occidental and Oriental art, Ukraine; in the Museum of Modern Renaissance, Boston, USA; in the Museum of a portrait, Russia and “The Sight from the third millennium”, Moscow, Russia, etc.

Our correspondent Lev Safonkin had a meeting with the artist

and set to him some questions about creativity.

Yuri, tell, how ideas of your pictures are born? Whence do you derive inspiration?

- Yuri. Emotions, experiences. It is just that catalyst which impulses to start creativity. This is   huge pleasure to create the art world, having enclosed in it your own ideas and internal emotional experiences.

Tell about your series “My dreams”. These are very unusual works.

What have you induced on creation of these pictures? Why is the child – the main character of your works?

- Yuri. I am with unimaginable force involved with iconographic scenes. They are attractive with concreteness of details, but thus there is put some surprising spiritual potential in them, which, in turn, gives rise to a flight of fancy. But thus I don't have a desire to create an illustration; I try to search for new images which conceptually would express the meaningless parties of eternal themes. The brick behind a brick is under construction of the abstracted idea, desire to tell with a brush feeling, influencing emotions. Consciousness is not an independent category. Rescue is in transition to a boundary phase of consciousness, whence it mystically opens a window into the spirit sphere, the sphere of the divine.

For a long time the vague desire to find an internal image of the final chapter of the bible dozed in me, but I wanted it should pass through antiquity and should express Eternity. Unexpectedly for myself I have found what I searched for. Once I called on my friends. We were sitting in a room and talked. A girl whom I knew since her birth was sitting there and I perceived her as an ordinary child. But a sun beam fell on her. I looked at, and it dawned on me and I unexpectedly for myself had seen an image and similarity of god. She had seemed to me being weaved of thousand solar rays. It was so surprisingly and unexpectedly! Here it was an image, a concrete embodiment of my idea! The key hero was suddenly and naturally found. I understood why children were pictured as angels.

Your picture “The Heavenly city”, does it also bear the impress of a bible theme?

- Yuri. The Heavenly city is the dwelling of God. I was fascinated with this poetic image. As for   description: wandering along the Universe filled with aromas, incenses and light He scales down on the earth in the Revelations of the final chapter as an Inner Sanctum. John Bogoslov describes Him like that. The city is embodied out of transparent gold and filled in with truth which is shown as transition from blue to blue and twelve gates decorate it. Just like a heavenly city Skinija of the Precept had been constructed by Moisey.

There is an opinion that our world in which we stay is weaved out of two spaces. One is equal to seven or it is mostly named the big face, another is equal to three or a small face. In Christianity it is named the father, the son, the spirit sacred. As a result the entire universe multiplies ten in the tenth degree. This arithmetic opens mighty open spaces for imaginations. I used this frequency rate as a key to understanding of this series of works. Such world arrangement is directly shown in the nature: seven colors of the rainbow, seven notes and etc. It is possible that seven days in a week is not casual.

The egg symbol was used by many religions. It is a symbol of eternity, infinity.

- Yuri. You are right. In the Babylon legends, for example, goddess Ishtar came out of the first egg fallen into the Euphrates river. In one of legends of ancient Egyptians, it was said that the Heavenly Goose brought an egg on the Flame Island, and from it solar god Ra was born who disseminated the gloom with the light he possessed. In China it is told, as if the ancestor of people Pangu was growing in an egg and when it became tight he punched the shell and appeared between Jan who turned into the sky, and Yin who turned into the earth. In the Russian folk-lore death of Koshchej is hidden in the egg. In Christianity an egg is one of the main symbols of the Easter holidays.

Egg is the beginning of life, and it also symbolizes posterity and the new life.

If to look at an egg, it consists of three parts: a shell, protein and a yolk. I used an idea of regeneration. But it is also a symbol of that out of each time it should be hatched something, and the shell is similar to the heavenly hardness. But there is also a more secret sense in this work. In the second and third chapters of John Bogoslov’s revelations it is possible to read prophecies which tell about seven periods of development of mankind after arrival of the Christ, and which describe seven churches. The church is also named as the bride of the Lord. In the penultimate chapter it is said that the heavenly city is also the bride of the Lord. The circle becomes isolated. I have presented an image of seven girls who are soaring in spheres-eggs, as an embodiment of seven periods of the conventional time.

To create illusion of the prospect leaving I have painted arches, whenever possible having collected images of different styles. It includes both classicism and gothic styles, elements of Mauritian style. Leaving lines remind minarets, I wanted to tell with this, that all styles –          the display of heavenly beauty.

What is beauty for you?

- Yuri. In general, this is a very conditional concept. What is beautiful today, can be ugly tomorrow. Harmony also differed at various times. But the criterion was one at all times. Look at that you name art and you will see your own face and soul.

Tell about other works of this series.

-Yuri. It is easier perceived work “Dialogue”. This is a dialogue of the girl with her internal voice. In this very case it was actual another interpretation of an image of the egg in which the soul of the girl lives and supervises over thoughts of another girl who is out. For me this is the girl whom I personify as a metaphor of an angel, the keeper of the earth, therefore I have represented the surface of an egg in the form of the globe. It is spirit of the earth which communicates with the angel the keeper. In the previous interpretation an egg played the part of the displayed Universe.

Why have you decided to mention such global questions?

-Yuri. The sense defines value which then leads to the comprehension of value. It is very important to understand from what point of view we look. From our point of view life is a chain of events, but the Most High has another opinion: there is no beginning, and there is no end. The beginning and the end occur at one time, simultaneously. And that distinguishes us though we are created just like the image and likeness of the God. Therefore when I am drawing, I don't try to look here and now but I search for the past, present, future in a twinkling of an eye. And in this the difference between a picture of the artist and a photo consists. Every artist searches, first of all, individually, expressing own experiences. But what is covered behind it?

Why did you give such a strange name to another triptych of yours? – “Whom to feel sorry for, after all everyone is a wanderer in the world?”

- Yuri. I have borrowed the name of this triptych, from Sergey Yesenin's verses. Here I have put the past, present and future in one row. Thereby I wanted to underline once again that Time is an absolutely human concept. My purpose – in an image of a girl to represent a soul which comes, passes tests, suffers, and then comes back and “their affairs will follow them”… The soul theme is closely connected with the theme of eternity.

Tell about your picture "Unity"!

- Yuri. Get accustomed, an essence of the girl is in regeneration, it is similar to an essence of the butterfly. The little girl grows and she herself gives rise to the new life, regenerating already in her own child. This image of regeneration is traditional for the eastern philosophy.

On the picture "Unity" there is three girls – one in one. It personifies a body which holds a soul, which holds and controls the spirit. Here we face again the feeling of Eternity. The bible abounds with the capacious images and experiences, they are very dynamical.

Your other work “The Leaving Titanic”

What is it about?

- Yuri: Sooner or later we are visited with a feeling of imperfection of our world which often appears in disharmony. I have devoted to this theme “The Leaving Titanic”

The world goes to destruction. An image of a girl quietly sitting on the trefoil – this is the embodiment of true vitality which is not connected with a dying civilization, with the “Titanic” of the old public, moral and cultural basis which is doomed to go to the bottom, doomed to death?

Whether many not yet created pictures exist in your imagination?

- Yuri. Each picture is a continuation of that I had no time to tell in the previous one. This is a constant process which is not impossible to interrupt. As soon as the process is interrupted a series comes to an end. And you wander in darkness of emotions until you find a new tuning fork which sets a rhythm of a new series. Sometimes a series dies off in itself, when you are tired of it. But anyway, while you work, it is always a fascinating adventure in which you wander and enjoy staying in it.

How do you adjust yourself on creativity? Perhaps, you have any especial methods helping creative process. Music, for example? Or you create in absolute silence and loneliness?

- Yuri. To adjust yourself to the creative process it is possible only in one way – to find what you want to tell, first of all, to yourself. The artist draws for himself and creates a collection for himself. Sometimes it suits the spectator, sometimes it does not. But when the idea is born and it grows, it becomes necessary to the artist and then it becomes actual for the spectator.

I use music sometimes, but as the rhythm maintenance, because the process of working is long enough and to express something – frequently it becomes a long marathon – and then it is necessary to search for auxiliary means. I know cases, when artists are for too long time in this marathon and they start to take alcohol to remove stress.

Silence and loneliness are necessary. When you are adjusted to the wave, each new emotion distracts from that which you try to carry out.

Whether is it critical your concern to your own works? Could you cut, for example, already finished work only because you have considered it unsuccessful? In general, what is the artist capable to do in the state of the emotional impulse?

- Yuri. Such works destroyed by me, there is a lot of. Maybe there are even more of them than being kept. Generally my pictures remind more a cemetery: under a surface of a picturesque layer there are multilayered tombs of not born pictures.

There is an opinion that artists created all the best works in a strong emotional pressure. Do you agree with it? Whether you consider, what mental stability, balance and well-being are counter-indicative to the artist?

- Yuri. No, I do not consider. The hungry artist is nothing better than the hungry person. But the essence of creative explosion consists that emotion is such substance that if to become isolated on it and not to distract on another, the huge mountain grows from a small grain of sand. And this mountain, being rolled on a gentle artist's soul, blows him up not worse than any dynamite. On peak of emotion (explosion) there is something sharp and interesting. Therefore loneliness is necessary for the artist in the creative process.

What advices can you give to the starting artists?

- Yuri. To learn, learn and study once again from other painters and from yourselves.

Whether are you happy with the completed work?

-Yuri. The result can never satisfy completely and definitely. There are always not enough possibilities as you always rest against the edge of the achievable. It gives rise to disappointment, but also the thirst to go further and everything that you could not manage to express may serve you as a start to search for in the new work. It is only a pity that the time is not always sufficient.

In any creativity the result is not the most important thing. Passion of comprehension when you try to hear an internal voice comes to see metaphysical essence of an event. Nothing can be more expensive than search in itself. Nitze speaks with Zarathustra’s lips: what is above and that is below... We study during all our life, and not only curiosity is put into this. You run into a special condition when you comprehend the nature and in some measure you comprehend yourself through it. We always stand at the comprehension border. I wouldn't want as my works were looked at as a certain subjective objectivity, I don't wish to think with such categories. For me search is important, in the search it is important an attempt to find transcendental object on purpose to open through it myself.

What pictures do you work over now? What are your plans for the future?

- Yuri. Am I again searching…