Evening on Dumskaya Square Print

Valeriy Babynin was born on January 26, 1966, in Odessa. He began studying fine arts from his childhood, at the Odessa Young Pioneers' House named after Yasha Gordienko (now Vorontsov's Palace). In 1985, he graduated from the Odessa M. B. Grekov State Art School where he studied at the Painting Department (previously, Painting and Drawing Education Department). At various times he worked as decorator at the Odessa Opera House, as artist at the Odessa Motion Picture Studio, as master of monumental works at the Odessa Arts Foundation (glass painting, mosaic); ran his own glass painting production and decorative glasswork business. Whatever I do in my life, I cannot abandon painting in which I was schooled from my childhood. It has merged in my soul with Odessa, the people, the life itself and has be-come part of my inner being. Long ago, when I was young, these lines came into my mind: Leave me alone, oh my sorrows, Quit my mind, oh daring dreams, - Heaven has wedded me today To the mysterious essence of Beauty. And I am standing, too awed to be able to move, Regretting that death is too distant, Unable to shout, or fall, or look back, - I am in the heavenlies - too high. Echoes of this revelation resound in my heart even to this day. Sometimes, quite unexpectedly, as I am passing by some familiar places, I am, as it were, falling through time, and some force is translating me somewhere where there is neither time nor death, and I see again the faces of the people whom I knew, the friends from the past... Maybe, it is because of this that I love to walk by the streets of my home city, to stop and watch the people, to dissolve in the crowd and sense participation in all that is going on. Sometimes the beauty of God's creation - the sky, the air, the nature, the man - and the beauty of man's own workmanship - architecture, things, objects of everyday life - merge wonderfully and quaintly in the city scenery. To convey the harmony of this unity on canvas is the most difficult thing for me and at the same time the most precious thing in painting. And I am thinking of the air too, the incomparable air of Odessa. I was growing and learning in the Odessa underground of the 80ies, experimenting in various styles and schools, only to become aware in the end of the enduring value of the being's givenness. There is some edge in contemplating the real world, beyond which there is a revelation of something that is larger than the physical reality.