Sometimes, looking at Victor's work, I asked him two types of questions. Both of them are traditional questions that many viewers and critics of art are asking: "What did he mean when he created this?" and "Why on Earth did he think of making this? What inspired/triggered this drawing?" I am quoting his answer (well, translating, really):
"It is not me who made up these drawings, it's someone else who sits inside me, so I am not responsible for their content or form or anything else." So I stopped asking...
A huge majority of his drawings that I've seen and that I am showing here he just sent to me for a certain occasion, but they had been created a long time ago, so it's impossible to track how they appeared. But in very few cases I witnessed this "sacred" moment.
Victor was reading (or, rather, rereading for the
n-th time) "The Doomed City" by the Strugatsky Brothers, and on a page describing the main character he caught these two words: "a star astronomer." This didn't even matter much for the rest of the book. Suddenly, he put the book aside and started drawing this:
"The Star Astronomer"
"Звездочет"
Here is another example. As I mentioned on the first page, my favorite drawing "Constellation of Cow" was created in Crimea, Ukraine - somehow the beautiful August sky "met" in his imagination with impressions of Somali cave paintings that he had seen in a magazine a long time ago. Here it is again - why not?
"Constellation of Cow."
"Созвездие Коровы"
Once Victor sent the following three drawings. I didn't physically "witness" how the these three came to life, since we were 5,000 miles apart, but at least I know that he produced them one after another the day before. There was no book or conversation to provoke them. Why fish? I am afraid, I'll never know...
"A Fish Wedding"
"Рыбья свадьба"
"Saving a Fish" ("Salvation" would be a more accurate translation)
"Спасение Рыбы"
"Begging"
"Умоляние"
