Born - Kardzhali, Bulgaria, 1977. Work & live - Sofia, Bulgaria. Education: Masters of Fine Art - National Academy of Art Sofia.
My reflection on visual art has developed in the direction of a transformation of traditional painting from a classical method into a contemporary installation. Today, when we replicate the avant-garde from the position of our personal uniqueness or new technological media, I attempt to rethink the contemporary world through the layering and mixing artistic techniques. The field of painting still offers a wealth of ways to satiate my aesthetic appetite and express my opinions.
I fell in love with abstract painting because it is unpredictable and interesting as a technique that requires all my attention. I use the wet-wet technique with pigments and different oils. This way of creating art is quite interesting, painting leads the artist in some unknown, random direction. It takes a lot of stubbornness to get what the author has done. I try with the knowledge I have and the chance to work together, not to hinder ourselves. In fact, what seems like chance is the result of a lot of experiments and labor. I like to work with light and shadow, warm and cold shades to create an abstract world. I like everyone who sees the picture to see different things and to understand it with his own fantasy.
INTERVIEWING
Nikola
Alipiev
When did Nikola
Alipiev feel the call of art?
Every child is an artist. They love
drawing and their own drawings are the most important ones. I failed
to develop other talents and was left with drawing. When I was 7 and
living in my hometown Kardzhali, my father took me to drawing lessons
with one of my favourite teachers, Emil Penchev. I think that’s
when I felt overwhelmed by the magic of painting. We painted mostly
in tempera and with large brushes. I was very impressed with colour
and composition.
Do you remember
your first artwork? What did it represent?
I do remember those first “works” I
did back then. We did great intuitive and colourful compositions.
Nikola, you are
a versatile artist whose work is composed of both abstract and
figurative pieces. However, you state to have fallen in love with the
abstract style. Could you tell us what is that captivates you the
most about the creative process of an abstract painting?
I don’t think of myself as a versatile
artist, but rather as one who has been through different stages in
the development of his interests. I was always interested in the
technique and technology of painting with colour. I went to high
school and then to the academy of art, and there I realised that I
wanted to acquire the ability to paint realistic artworks.
The results are always a bit more weird
than what I expected; some things just don’t work out the way I
planned, or they simply develop in another direction. My work is
almost entirely colour painting on canvas, and abstraction is my
latest passion. I feel that it provides me with a different point of
view to create my art, with a different motivation, or maybe it’s
just a feeling of going back to childhood. Abstraction is to me the
search for new shapes without the limitations of realism, surrealism
or conceptualism, with which I worked with for quite a while. I think
that’s what truly drew me to this journey.
Which personal
experiences would you say have influenced the most in the current
identity of your art?
We, people, are beings naturally drawn
to sharing with others. We use ideas from one another, we experience
things together and dream together. I think the people around me; my
friends, my colleagues and the teachers I admire, influenced me the
most in shaping my tastes and opinions. Also the drive for freedom,
for going beyond the everyday uniform reality, makes you ask yourself
questions such as: does drawing in a certain way, moment or about a
specific subject make me feel freer and fulfilled? Of course this
process goes both ways, one can’t be indifferent to the
discoveries, tragedies and joys of the world around us. Through my
art I aim to start a dialogue with the viewer, to show them that my
world and my questions are theirs too.
The composition
and motif of your paintings, as well as your unique way of using the
colours surround your work in a mysterious, magical atmosphere. Where
do you look when searching for creative inspiration?
I don’t do sketches or drawings on the
canvas. Not even in my most classical or conceptual works. I like the
spontaneity of ideas coming into shape naturally and finally giving
the true meaning to my creation. However, this is not always straight
forward. In my case, for instance, inspiration doesn’t come easy.
Experience can help, but it can also stop you. Sometimes what you
need to do in order to create something new is to escape yourself,
but that can be the hardest part.
Which art
currents do you find most inspiring and which artists would you point
to as artistic references?
I think all currents and styles are
important and inspiring. The question is what do you want to take
from them and what works for you at a precise moment. The list of my
favourite artist gathered throughout the years is long. Right now I’m
more interested in experimenting with different materials, such as
oil, various solvents, pigments, etc., and I look up to artists who
display new technological processes.
What are the
greatest satisfactions your career as an artist has brought and
brings to your life?
A strange life and about ten of my
paintings that I really like.
What are, in
your opinion, the biggest challenges that artists face nowadays?
Nowadays it is a very common gesture to
scroll down in our phones through hundreds of paintings of all sort
of art styles, genres and time periods; but our eyes only stop at
either the most scandalous ones, or at the easily “digestible”
ones.
We, the contemporary artists, аre lost
somewhere along that stream of visual information. Artworks are
becoming ephemeral items that only last what the brief time lapse
before we keep on scrolling. We find it difficult to spend a whole
day in front of a contemporary art piece, as we would in front of
Vermeer, for example.
Where could we
find Nikola Alipiev when not painting?
What I love the most are lazy days.Those are the ones that really
charge up my creative mind.