"Dali's Violin" (right part of the triptych "Salvador Dali")

On October 15, 2023, he completed work on the canvas “Dali’s Violin”. The painting is part of a large-scale triptych dedicated to the famous Spanish painter and surrealist of the 20th century, Salvador Dali. I started working on the triptych back in 2019. As a result, in 2020, my painting “Dali’s Throne” was born. Salvador Dali sits on a throne surrounded by the attributes of the world of surrealism. I have an idea to introduce into the plot of the painting objects that Dali never depicted in his work, but they would fit very harmoniously into the world of surrealism. So, in the painting “Dali’s Throne” I painted a steam locomotive. Work on ideas for the other two paintings took a long time. The decision did not come immediately, but like an inspiration.
I was given several beautiful sea shells, from the simplest to the most bizarre and fantastic. I admired their intricate shapes, the play of light, the patterns on the surface, and listened to the “music of the sea.” It was as if it dawned on me - I literally saw in my imagination the plot of the next picture! On the left, one of the sea shells is levitating in the sky. In the center is the main character of the picture, a creature with the body of a violin and the chest of a shell. He has a head with eyes and a mouth. It is formed by the top of the violin: the “neck” of the fingerboard; a tuning box with pegs, which at the same time are the character’s ears. Immediately the next object appears, which Salvador Dali never depicted in his works, but it literally asks to be brought into Dali’s world: this is an iron. The hand of the hero of the picture rests on his arm. With it he smooths out the folds on the ground and, like napkins, square snowflakes. I introduce a bow into the plot, one end of which stands on the ground, the other, rushes upward, goes into the heavens, above the edge of the picture. I would say beyond the skies. In fact, the hero of the picture is an apparatus for creating and extracting an ornamental symphony, consisting of a violin, sea shells and a person.
The actual painting process of “Dali’s Violin” in oil on canvas lasted about a year. In addition to the storyline depicting a surreal character with the body of a violin and the chest of a sea shell, I depicted this world through the prism of my ornamental perception. The entire sky of the plot is made up of large snowflakes, which in turn are formed by the smallest patterns. The entire sky is covered with fancy arabesques using the effect of additional colors. Some patterns have bluish and greenish shades adjacent to delicate pinks and purples. From a distance, everything merges into a general play of light and it seems that the sky in the picture is flickering. The work consists of approximately one hundred thousand patterns. In the coloring of the painting, I tried to adhere to the principles of the “old masters” of the Renaissance. The dominant colors are: ocher; brown; pearl and terracotta shades. I depicted a mountain near the horizon (on one side of the character), and a fortress with a lighthouse tower on the other. The main character of the painting and all the objects also shine through other snowflakes, as if located between the viewer and the character of the canvas. Snowflakes have different shapes, from classic hexagonal to seventeen-sided, and also my favorite square and diamond-shaped ones. This creates the effect of a mirror, figurative echo, when snowflakes in the sky enter into dialogue with snowflakes that seem to be next to us. It is worth noting that I noticed this special “visual echo” effect in my paintings many years ago. This compositional technique was born by chance and is part of my concept of ornamentalism. The patterns on the ground have a thread structure. The main character of the picture smoothes out these soil wrinkles with an iron. Another unexpected and interesting effect turned out - the iron I introduced into the plot, like an object that Dali never depicted, strokes the snowflakes like napkins. And they fit into the plane of the multidimensional space of the composition. A new dimension is being born. Surrealism ceases to be just surrealism. In combination with my ornamentalism, a new reality of being appears.