Comfort Drawing

I was born in 1994 and grew up in Vanadzor, a small town in Armenia marked by collapse and survival. The factories stood half-ruined, the streets carried the echo of the 90s war and earthquake, and a bandit subculture shaped the daily rhythm of life. For many, it was a harsh and hopeless environment. For me, it became the foundation of my art. My father was a motorcycle enthusiast who kept a welding garage in our backyard. It was a place of fire, steel, and endless experiments—where I could break things apart and put them back together without being scolded. My mother, a teacher, brought me fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. I listened again and again, building worlds in my head as she read. These two forces—industrial grit and imaginative storytelling—formed the raw material of my creativity. I believe talent is not inherited but shaped by environment. In Vanadzor I grew up surrounded by broken structures, ghost-like buildings, and abandoned factories. Instead of despair, I saw strange beauty in decay—the kind of beauty that only time and nature can create. For me, art is not about perfection, but about transformation: how ruins can become monuments, how brokenness can hold meaning, how dystopia can reveal its own poetry. My work reflects this vision. I combine elements of post-Soviet industrial ruins, dystopian futures, and symbolic storytelling. I draw on childhood memories of welding sparks, dark fairy tales, and the brutal yet fascinating urban landscapes of my hometown. Each piece is a collision of memory and imagination, steel and story, ruin and rebirth. Through my art I invite viewers into a world that is both deeply personal and universally resonant—a world shaped by collapse, but also by the endless human drive to create meaning from it.