Mechanical Beetle Painting

The Surrealism and Abstractionism of Dreams By Alexander Vorobyev My voice of originality speaks about dreams, struggle and conflict, politics and ideology, nature and the absurd. I experiment with dreamscapes and ideas and my watercolours display a calculated compositional approach, yet seem to flow with automatism - a complex mix of texture and forms displaying my unique symbology. The viewers journey around my works, always finding new meanings the deeper they look. I am inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's comment: 'the chaotic nature of thought is sacred'. It is through this pilgrimage with my stream of consciousness that I break through to the other side of perception, and new meanings are delivered through my works. I am fascinated by the concept of the cross: it is my childhood again - with crosses of window frames of old houses, masts of ships, it is a handle of a sword, mediaeval Europe, crusaders, a razor blade; it is a battle, a struggle of the vertical and horizontal lines, of the spiritual and the material worlds. There is something magical at the moment of a collision of the vertical with the horizontal, when you are neither awake nor in deep slumber. There is a distinct spark emerging during that interwoven contact in the middle of that crossover. And that is the moment when I receive the gift of an image, an idea, a whole composition, or just a few words for a clue. Crosses appear as a mosaic like backgrounds, clasped in hands, intertwined with forms or scattered across a composition. I am interested in texture and learn about it from living and dead nature, be it the bark of the trees or wings of butterflies or rotting flesh of fruit. I often use flower pollen and dub it into the paper; I use aloe vera plant or pomegranate juice or even my own blood if I happen to cut my finger in the process. This way I become an artist who mixes his blood with ink. Typography is everywhere: tumbling letters, people's names, words, sentences, newspaper clippings and whole written-out paragraphs inside and outside the main compositions. Dust is gold. I call on dust to become my ally, my co-author. I even leave my watercolours horizontally on the floor, so that the pores of my specially-created texture absorb as much dust as possible. Complex texture works as a trap for insects and dust, so I carry on mixing watercolours with insects and dust.