The collection of paintings "Garden of Virtues" is very important in my oeuvre, because it contains 12 special works: my Zodiac series, which are all small in size and resemble portraits – portraits of the virtues. My initial aim when creating these portraits, however, was not at all to create paintings related to the Zodiac. In fact, I simply set out to paint the virtues as best as I could. During the course of my work I discovered that portraying a virtue in all its purity is not an easy task, since a virtue is something complicated, intangible, something that for Aristotle – the great philosopher of antiquity – is a quality which is the mean between its excess and its deficiency. Just as ruining the balance between this excess and deficiency can lead to a virtue becoming a vice, so too the addition of incompatible qualities to a virtue can render its portrayal entirely impossible. Nevertheless, I persevered.
It was not until I had completed a number of these portraits that I suddenly realized – discovering for myself! – that I had unconsciously painted the portraits, not of the virtues alone, but of the different signs of the Zodiac! It was a great surprise even for me, and upon carefully studying the paintings I saw that they really were like representations of the starry constellations! Meanwhile the virtues were interwoven within the images, unnoticed – much as in real life many things pass unnoticed at first glance – so it is difficult to recognize them. But like small puzzles the virtues shine through the works, allowing one to truly discover how the stars reflect themselves into the human reality as virtues. Thus, virtues, which exists within Man, and the constellations, which exist outside of Man, formed an inseparable nexus.
My wish is to urge everyone to give themselves the pleasure of discovering the virtuous messages from the stars in these paintings, experiencing and seeing in a crystalline form through art what is actually invisible for their eyes.
The Zodiac series was created using the music of various composers from different eras, ranging from Pierre de la Rue's Renaissance masses (Virgo and Scorpio) and Johann Joseph Fux's sacred Baroque works (Aries), to the late Romantic songs of Nikolai Medtner (Cancer), the cello concertos of Paul Hindemith (Taurus) and the postmodern quarter-tone compositions of Ivan Wyschnegradsky (Libra).
The collection of paintings "Garden of Virtues" is very important in my oeuvre, because it contains 12 special works: my Zodiac series, which are all small in size and resemble portraits – portraits of the virtues. My initial aim when creating these portraits, however, was not at all to create paintings related to the Zodiac. In fact, I simply set out to paint the virtues as best as I could. During the course of my work I discovered that portraying a virtue in all its purity is not an easy task, since a virtue is something complicated, intangible, something that for Aristotle – the great philosopher of antiquity – is a quality which is the mean between its excess and its deficiency. Just as ruining the balance between this excess and deficiency can lead to a virtue becoming a vice, so too the addition of incompatible qualities to a virtue can render its portrayal entirely impossible. Nevertheless, I
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