Ilya Volykhine
Oceanic Whispers $17,500 Status: Sold
Black Gloves $3,950 Status: Sold
A Perfect Day $16,000 Status: Sold
Fiery Sunset $21,500 Status: Available
Artist Statement
I have been told by my favourite auntie that as a 2-year-old kid I sat on the pavement outside my parent’s house i n Russia with my feet in the gutter digging with a broken stick. I liked scraping and scratching at the dirt, she said I found it soothing. Aged 5, I was dragged kicking and screaming into school. I didn’t like being there. The place was petty, cold and heartless. The only times I felt at all within myself was when we had morning play or did painting.
We made pictures with the powder paints; mixing the colours soothed me. This is what I’ve kept on doing (and have always protected within myself ) even when I was working shuffling asphalt in our small town, before I left for America.
Art has always been what I go to. This uncompromising streak is how I have aligned myself with the universe: It i s very simple and ordinary because i t i s nothing more than expressing my nature: I’m an artist and doing what I’m meant to be doing: I believe that art can be defined as line and form coming through the hand – the head, and even the heart, somehow have to get out of the way.
To the ego ridden individual to become an artist gives them a tin-pot identity and the elevated status they crave. Ironically just picture making is undervalued. But digging i n the gutter with a stick can change the universe just as well.
