All too human

Once Fernand Leger dreamt about such an art where the panhuman and plastic would be inseparable from each other. We often tear off the personality of an artist from his artworks, but after all, they are uniform, conjoint and indissoluble. The history of my relations with Oleg Zakomorny counts more than one decade. It allows me to confirm that his art rests on the strong foundation of his personality that is based on indisputable human values: honesty, sincerity and, the main thing, love to the family, parents, to his wife and children. These qualities were put and engrained in him during his childhood. The Family is a spiritual homeland for him.

If art is any guide (first of all, for the artist himself), then firstly it guides that each human existence is one of a kind. It consciously or unconsciously encourages in the person a sensation of individuality, uniqueness, transforming him or her from a social animal into a person. The question of unique personality is a key question in art. Oleg Zakomorny is a person with his own set of values. He has completely dissolved himself in his artworks. Whether it is a graphics or a sculpture – by all means the artist’s personality is noticeable, with his own views, the character and degree of maturity. His artworks are a reality that he carries in himself. His creativity reflects the internal, harmoniously arranged world that was created by his perception and his ideals. Such qualities as carefulness of his memory, vivacity of his imagination allow the artist to create the inspirited environment in his works.

The range of creativity of Zakomorny is very wide: from a drawing to a monumental sculpture. Thus, each kind of creativity contains genre variety: portraits, figures, animalier art, garden and landscape sculpture. The main aim of his artworks is to reflect universality of a human nature.

As Miguel de Unamuno said, that we should search “in local and private depths universal things and in temporal depths and passing eternity”. Oleg Zakomorny’s creative aspirations are wholly in line with that quote. These words can be his artistic creed. Zakomorny is a very sensitive person with commitment to self analysis. His artworks filled with inexhaustible tenderness, with most refined musical polyphony. The feelings are so deep that they have no sentimentality. This art is rather piano, than forte. At his presence, those sounds, which are usually muffled by a roar and noise, become audible. He leads us to ourselves – to our true nature. There are such people, whose quiet voice is a speech of silence. There is no need neither to shout, nor to outvoice. Oleg has such a delicate voice. His voice echoes in his spectators.

In the literature (and accordingly in literary criticism) there is a phenomenon and concept of confessionary prose. There is no such notion in the art criticism dictionary, as far as I know. However, this does not mean that there is no such phenomenon in the fine arts. Oleg Zakomorny’s art that is deeply personal, lively and vivid proves it. It is autobiographical in general. Oleg with the unprecedented confidence towards the spectator opens the sincere world and life of his relatives – wife Irina and children. The works devoted to them are full of power and tenderness. They create aura of human sympathy and participation. Oleg’s creative activity concentrates more on spiritual movement, than on its results, more on the creativity process, than on an outcome. Plasticity of his artworks is absolutely self-important: it lively, is sensual-impulsive, with a agile matter. His art can be characterized with changeful-recognised handwriting and difficult-diverse texture. His art space contains art-documentary and metaphorical works, that were invented and created, existing here and now, living in imagination or with ease snatched out of the depths of the past.

Oleg Zakomorny is lively and constantly developing person. Traditions and innovations in his creativity are organic and natural. Creativity for him is simultaneously both a knowledge, and self-knowledge. Boris Pasternak’s poetic manifesto is fully describes him:

At the first sight, Oleg Zakomorny’s graphics can seem quite simple. Nevertheless, when you start to analyze them, you understand that they have very difficult structure, as though a special organism, with remarkable internal logic and symmetry. Only external means, which the artist allows to see, are simple. The simplicity of means is almost a children’s clearness of the graphic basis, all that clears viewer’s eyes from the automatic vision, removes habitualness of perception, does the world clear again, intelligible and reasonable.

The spiritual essence, depth and human vigilance of the artist have been proved itself in a portrait. A portrait is an expression of “a personal, unique originality” (N. Tarabukin). In a portrait, there is a problem of the relation between an artist with a represented person, because a portrait, as the kind of meeting of two subjectivities, while approaching to this problem, squares it. Each true portrait is a some kind of a self-portrait because, an artist interprets character of the model through a prism of his experience. The most magnetically attractive Oleg’s portraits are the portraits of people closest to him: wife Irina and children. They stream sincerity and love fluids.

Oleg’s creative life without Irina is inconceivable for me. She is not only the mother of his children, but also Oleg’s co-author. She is his muse, favourite model, and the composer of his art albums.

Oleg Zakomorny’s art due to its strongly pronounced ethical orientation urged to cause catharsis. It is about a Person and for a Person.

Grigory Klimovitsky