I designed this work in my need to put a window where there is none - on the barren and uninteresting, evenly, almost mechanically, painted wall. It would serve as my portal through which to step into a world aiding the flight of my soul, to make my room a temple in which to feel at peace. This work would help me connect with the higher and subtle projections of existence. Ultimately, this is precisely what happened as part of the completion process.
Nowadays we live not in homes, but evenly painted concrete boxes, where there are no longer books, globes, fireplaces with crackling flames, or emotional warmth. The material and real sensory world lives in parallel with us, but beyond our way of life and the spiritual expression. We have large windows, which we hide with evenly colored blinds or grey, beige or cream curtains en masse. Hence, human in the metropolis closes the only remaining pitiful portal to nature, to our roots. Very often in our time we lack vita thought, idea, soul, and spirit.
To me, human is like a tree: our crown – gateway to the heavens, with their infinite knowledge and meaning; our roots – a union with the earth, a compass to purpose a continuity. Today, the branches are often broken by our raw materialism, we have cut off the roots to nature and family, and we are trying to live in a capsule, just like the machines we create. Questions, reflections, searches are often absent in this capsule. Life moves in a straight line in a specific mode. Freedom is promoted, but there is a lack of thought and a need to connect. There is a division. If I can describe our time in two words, they are inauthenticity and division. And even when we make an attempt to connect with our roots or crown, this experience is superficial and short-lived, or even borrowed.
This work is the fruit of the need to connect. When I made the initial sketches of beautiful real stained-glass windows from real cathedrals, they were complete, not torn windows. However, one autumn morning I woke up before sunrise, possibly about 4-5 o'clock, looked at the paper projects, tore them up and rearranged them because they seemed too harmonious to be authentic. And I wanted this work to look just like torn paper assembled with mismatched pieces. It was a reflexive act of my experience that gave rise to a work that looked complete even though it was torn, reminiscent of a circle, even though it was not a circle. The standard symmetrical vision of the rosette became a contradiction and sparked something new. Discomfort drives exploratory thinking. The contradictions between the pulse of the time in which I live and my inner searches, needs and views, created this piece of art. The rosette is a solar male symbol, it has a geometric symmetrical shape reflecting the divine perfection. I tore three different rosettes and made a composition. It reflects my need to look beyond the material, and for every human this quest flows through contradiction. I created this work as my way to peace, my way to seek questions and answers, meaning and faith. But it is not an escape, but a means. My creation provoked me more than I provoked its creation. Maybe that's why working process was extremely slow and consistent. While was doing it, I listened to spiritual teachers, historical analysis, gardening manuals, classical music and much more. I thought about them. It has really become a portal for me, which still purifies me. Every day spent in its making, unfolded for me a deep and rich source of ideas and reflections. Textile treatment has been shown to have a therapeutic effect, and perhaps that was the case with me.
There truly is something sacred in sheep's wool. When a sheep's wool is sheared, it feels light for the sheep. The wool brings a softness and warmth, sealing the sun's rays and the vastness of the meadows and hills; the wool material remembers the wet grass and the long walks of the sheep. Why is it that the wool of a dead sheep is poor quality - brittle and dead? Because it has already experienced death with the sheep. For me, the wool is alive and bright, I have been working with wool for 8 years and this material provokes me every time, and want to incorporate it in my future artistic endeavours. I decided to make a window through which no light passes, but the wool carries the memory of it, the structure of the rosette is broken, but brings a sense of completeness and compositional harmony. It is performed in a language uncharacteristic of the felt technique. Unlike almost any other textile that would tear and disintegrate out of these thousands, perhaps a million punctures of the felt needle, for the raw wool with felt technique that I used - each puncture made the structure stronger, even in some cases building it.
This work was a path to my quest to connect with the higher - beyond the stereotype I have inhabited so far, as a person and an artist.