Slava at his exhibition
I’m an artist from Moscow, Vyacheslav Korolenkov, an impressionist. I paint oil paintings.I paint impressions of what I see and it’s most likely, the feeling, my feeling of the world, my feeling of the light what I paint. It reflects on objects in different ways and it completely inflames all of me. And I probably couldn’t help but express this state of ecstasy. Perhaps, spectators feel it, those who come to my exhibitions. One needs a lot of training to paint impressions. I graduated from Stroganov Academy in Moscow. It was a long time ago, it’s been approximately 30 years.But I have this feeling that I always keep learning.It’s not a bravado, and I’m in fact simply an apprentice of His Highness Nature, who gave birth to me, let me into this world, and I was eager to understand what for.I was not interested in living an ordinary life, when you have a family, have a job, go to the university and go to work, and then you retire and find peace. I’m not interested in it.I just saw that I’m surrounded by people, who kind of live together, but I couldn’t see happiness in their eyes.
And it frightened me, can it be indeed that I would spend my life reproducing well known pathways of many and many of my acquaintances, my parents. And I wanted to figure it out.It took me many years to understand that life is a joy, no matter what. And probably that’s why my paintings are bright, light and imbued with joy, which comes from inside. Actually Picasso said that painting is an artist’s diary. I like this thought because I live every day, I meet people, I see new landscapes, still lifes, they are everywhere, they are dissolved in everything. They are dissolved in light and I paint light. Imagine what it would have been like if there was darkness? We couldn’t see anything. As soon as sun rays touch any objects, life starts to amaze me. And if I’m in this state of amazement, as my experience shows me, there certainly will be people on the same wavelength, who will be amazed by the world in the same way. And no matter what I paint – a person, a still life or a landscape, – this magical state of excitement, that I’m alive, that I can reflect it onto the canvas, is just captured, is crystallized in the paintings. And that’s it . Especially, of course, I like to paint humans, because it’s a soul, because a human being is in front of me. It doesn’t matter at all is he / she old or young, but a kind of excitement occurs. There is nothing more beautiful in nature than human. There is nothing more loving, more beautiful, more amazing – a human is the highest creature of nature. That’s what I’m interested in. And if I’m capable of capturing, catching this inner essence, then my task is accomplished. It means I haven’t lived this day in vain.
Why do I paint? I was never asked this question before, and it’s completely amazing. But do you ask yourself why do you breath? Do you ask why does your hair grow? Or why does your heart beat? But probably the answer to this question is from the sphere of no answers. Why do I live, why do I die? There is no answer to it. Why do I get up? Why do I smile? It is all from the same sphere. If you are able not to paint, well, it’s fine then, don’t paint anything. But if not painting is impossible for you, send it all to hell, do what you love, with all passion, with all love.And why would you spend your life doing things you don’t like or things the society don’t need? Earning money, all that stuff. You can just live your life in vain. It will just pass by and that’s it.
