Original Oil Painting. The Monk, Series 10 Painting

Hello everybody, my name is ILIA TORBIN, I was born in Russia, in Barnaul city, in 1985 year. ​ From my childhood I felt some energy or feeling inside me, which needed to be going out in some way. Subconsciously, all the time I was looking for some instrument, with the help of which I could realize that energy. ​ I started from music, I played acoustic guitar and saxophone. At the very beginning I felt that I’m on the right way. But after sometime I understood that something was stopping me. The problem which I realized that time was that, being a musician, you need some other people to create a finished piece of art, you need a studio to record the music and quite expensive equipment usually. And it disturbed me much every time. ​ After sometime I introduced with several artists in our city. And I saw that being an artist you don’t need all that stuff which musicians need, you can be absolutely free in your artwork. Even just a paper and a pen can be enough to create a finished piece of art. This glamored me much. I started to be interested in fine arts and in 2011 year, began to attend classes of drawing, painting and composition. This is how i started my path as an artist. ​ From the beginning I felt much more freedom in my artwork and creativity till nowadays. When I was a musician I really loved jazz music, because of improvisation. And improvisation is what I’m looking for in art in general. ​ Improvisation for me is a pure 100% freedom, where you can do anything you feel, not relying on any rules or fashion. ​ My goal is to come to pure improvisation in my art, which is really not easy to do, in fact. ​ I think the main difference in my paintings from others, that I work directly with canvas and don’t make any sketches or preparatory drawings and never use any kind of tips, models, nature or photos, and trying to improvise and experiment every time. People can call it imagination, but I prefer to call it artistic intuition or, possibly, subconscious. ​ Images are coming from different sources. It can be literature, movies, photos or everyday life. But images are not coming directly to paintings. ​ In fact, I have a general idea before I start to paint, but image is developing during the process and the result can be absolutely different from what I saw before in my head, because of improvisation process.