Sergei Skripitsyn interview

Realism Without Borders. How would you explain your approach to art? Sergey Skripitsyn. It is hard to explain my own way. It is very subjective – judging your own art. For example – some artists identify themselves as realists because they doing paintings where one can clearly see the difference between a cow and a boat. Some people agree with it, some not. What is the truth? We will just have to see in the future because the meaning of the word “realism” is transforming. Only time will give us the answer. People very often ask me about the direction of my art. In my opinion the best answers for this question – are the paintings themselves. You may see in the paintings the ideas of artist, his look to life, his passion to the art.

RWB. What do you think most important in your paintings? SS. I think that I’m an artist who works in painting and who makes a kind of sculpture in my paintings. The main focus for me is the creation of the subject with the instruments of color, tone, spot, an line… But the most important for me is transferring to the viewer, my feeling of reality. The difficulty here is to capture in the image, the feelings which we have, without just simple copying of nature. Creating life on the canvas!

Exact picture of reality is weaker than reality itself because the picture becomes secondary to reality. The artist must create a picture which will cause the same feeling that seeing it in nature does.

RWB. What are your goals? SS. I do not have exact goals that I want to realize at the moment… One of my teachers told me an interesting idea: “… When all will be as you wanted, you will stop to be an artist… and you will stop to paint” Creativity is the process of an everyday search which leads to good and bad results. I feel the style where everything is smooth and quiet is the wrong way! The artist is like a child – he never knows if he does good or bad art and the artist never will know what he has reached.

RWB. What is your advice to young artist? SS. I’m not sure if I can give advice to other artists because I feel that I just started myself. We have the same questions. It is not really important where we have studied as I feel it is impossible to learn painting. When I was a student at Kiev Academy the main goal of our teachers was teaching us how to learn. They taught us to respect and love painting. An artist learns all his life and every new painting for him must be like a very first painting! It is not easy but an artist must be bold. Sometimes it is better to refuse the good discoveries which you have made in the last painting, and do the next painting absolutely new. And time will show what was really good and what was just fake…