Inspiration

n this painting, Victor depicts the interior of his soul. The fence of intertwined twigs shown in the lower right corner marks the division between his mind and his deep soul. His mind is not actually represented in the painting; his conscious mind is represented by the space in which the viewer of the artwork is standing. Past the fence of woven twigs, in the space of the painting, Victor shows us the elements of his deep soul. The candle represents the male or yang aspect, the energy of fire. The moon, shown as an apple, symbolizes the feminine or yin aspect. The apple, juicy and full of life force, is an ancient symbol of female energy. There are several levels on which this process of inspiration can be understood to occur. The different art forms inspire each other; i.e., music inspires the visual artist, painting can inspire a musician, music inspires poetry and writing, and so on. Also, the external reality, as perceived by our nervous system, inspires art of all forms. Victor also shows the bottle of rum, another of his sources of inspiration. Victor shows his drawing paper as floating above the surface of the table. This is because all of Victor's drawings and paintings contain many secrets, which are hidden underneath the surface. The viewer is invited to look beneath the surface images of Victor's paintings and to find out what the underlying aspects are. This is a process that can occur over the course of years of contemplating this artwork. The direction of the shadow of an object indicates the source of the illumination of the object. We see here that the apple's shadow is created by the light from the candle; i.e., male energy is the light for woman. The shadow of the pencil indicates that the source of illumination for the pencil is the moon; i.e., a man's creativity is inspired by woman. In the distance, we see the River Don and the dark trees of Rostov. The interior landscape of Victor's soul is still that of Rostov, Russia, where he was born and grew up.