Eternal human desire for Absolute?! Appeal to God!? Or a lifelong road to destination Eternity? A passage to your true self!? Or an ambitious career ladder!? Or maybe this ‘forward and upward’ is an embodiment of progress and victory of human thought over nature!? Is it a victory, though!?

Nature is always striving for naturalness and asymmetry, giving birth to smoothness of forms so pleasant for human eye. Harmony, golden ratio, natural landscape, these are all links of the same logical chain. Even human face is harmonious due to barely noticeable asymmetry. Recurrence is characteristic for natural lines. Can recurrence be viewed upon as a synonym for infinity? Or rather, it is infinity which is conditioned by the recurrence of all natural processes and their consistent pattern. Whatever happens to each of us, our surroundings, whole country, all mankind, we can be sure that day will follow night and a beautiful sunset will happen again. Even if we cease to exist, another sunset will follow just the same and a dawn after it… 

A human being is just the opposite to that, he is the segment of a straight line, limited by the date of birth and death, a sort of individual system of coordinates on a complex map of Creation. We say that “great people continue to live in their works” or “this man entered history”. Human genius is no longer a line segment, it is a vector, beam, which sets the direction and knows no boundaries. Nikola Tesla set a vector for mankind under the name of ‘electrodynamics’, and then: ‘Enjoy yourselves, people, invent electric cars, set up trusts because perfection knows no limits’. But then, there is no limit to diversity of artistic forms. Geniuses just set vectors, discovering new styles and directions in art. 
How often each of us finds himself in the role of a hero from an absurd computer game, overcoming obstacles and honing skills, scrambling to the very top and on reaching what he thinks is his limit, just enters the following level. And everything starts from scratch, only the rules of the game become more and more sophisticated and ladders steeper and more dangerous. And at the very end when there is no time to change anything and all spare lives have already been spent, we suddenly realize that the aim was absolutely different and heart of the matter is something absolutely different…

Ladder is an infinite vertical crossed by horizontal rungs and each crossing is a cross. Cross as the symbol of Absolute, the point of intersection of horizontal and vertical, the aim and the meaning of human life. And again we come to the commonplace ‘forward and upward’ we started our conversation about the ladder with. 

In a novel popular among business people “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand I came across one thought, which has captured my imagination for a long time:
‘They say that there's nothing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end.’

In this collection contradistinction of ductile forms of living nature to a straightforward framework created by man reaches its apotheosis. It becomes the main meaning of the expressive canvases. I call these living lines a neurography of fine and at times extreme emotional states. Flexible living nature so inclined to asymmetry and improvisation argues with a straight line human mind gravitates to so much. By simple geometric figures an ancient man managed to designate even so complex concepts as God, Cosmos, Sun and then formed them into ornament. Thus primeval art initiated modern conceptual art! Man learned to generalize, stylize and reach utter expressiveness through simplification! Thus a simple geometric 3D structure has become a model of Cosmos for an ancient thinker. 

Yet, it is not always that these structural lines regulate and harmonize space and serve as imaginary frame emphasizing beauty of the nature. Sometimes interference of man into nature’s laws takes ugly forms. Then auxiliary structural lines of a rough drawing shine like a broken bone of a mutilated body: something that is natural takes bizarre forms causing horror and disgust. Contrast created by beautifully, finely and spaciously worked out details and expressive hard drawing excites and inspires me. 

Ladders in my pictures transform into masts, strings, guys, industrial constructions, mechanism prototypes, remind of futuristic rays cutting through soft natural forms, they pierce palpable flesh pulsating with life just like radio waves or electric streams. 

I view this as a core of human nature’s duality. We want to be spontaneous and natural. A fashionable trend demands ‘to go back to our natural basics and instincts’. Yet, it is exactly complex actions which are not natural, not conditioned by physiological program, that turn an animal into a human and encourage his spiritual growth.

Take art, music and literature. Fashion, design, architecture, refined cuisine - they are all products of a complex mental work of a human brain and not just satisfaction of primary physiological needs of a body, mass consumption culture so skillfully speculates on. A person who thinks and analyzes is simply dangerous to such culture. Only an uncompromising powerof art can turn strings created by human hands into strings of a human soul. And then familiar space extends, opening portal into eternity.


Stairway to heaven

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Stairway to heaven (5)