GALO: Recently, I believe this year, the president of Georgia presented you with a commission to do a permanent work at the national museum. What was that about?

RK: Yes, I was in Georgia in May. He was supposed to be at the event there, it was all arranged, but you know last minute things, political…and he wasn’t there, but there were some very prominent people, artistic people, art critics, and the painting went to the national museum. I painted it in New York.

GALO: What is the painting of?

RK: Actually, it’s a very symbolic painting. I studied Kabbalah; I still do, and am very much interested, not only in Jewish traditional mysticism but other Kabbalistic concepts. The image in the painting is a Metatron. Metatron is the force, according to Kabbalistic teaching, of infinity, what we call God. It has no beginning or end. If it was to come back, it would destroy the world, if this infinity came back in our space. Life would be no more.

GALO: If, for instance, it collapsed on itself, it would be what we call a black hole?

RK: Yes. And the force that causes this infinity to unite is called Metatron –that’s what I painted.

GALO: So that force, since it has no face, it’s basically an abstract painting? But I imagine it must show a lot of energy to express that force.

RK: I expressed it figuratively. It’s a figure but no physical face.

GALO: That’s interesting, because if not a religion per se, a curiosity in you about where we all came from, these mysteries—how does one convey that, if you’re a musician, or a painter, a writer, or an artist, how do you find the way? It’s so beyond understanding.

RK: Yes…it’s impossible to imagine – it is cause and effect. Our world is one of effect. So we are the compilation of something. Because of some kind of force, we exist.

GALO: You look around you–all you have to do is study nature–and you know it couldn’t come out of nothing.

RK: Absolutely. It’s an endless search. You can talk endlessly about this.

GALO: My last question has to do with what were some of the factors that drive you to continue painting and maybe that search or that question that comes up repeatedly in one’s life. What does it mean? Where did we come from? Sometimes when you take up the brush, the brush has a life of its own.

RK: Absolutely. In every aspect of our everyday life, we are surrounded by infinity — not just physically, space-wise. Let’s say, I’m working with my brushes on the paints on the palette, I have three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue.

GALO: That’s where you start.

RK: Every second you are in touch with infinity, because those colors can be infinitely changed.  There is no limit in creating differences; one color will not be exactly like another. Same thing within the world of sounds; the sounds can be infinite.

GALO: The resonance of a sound, for instance.

RK: My philosophy about this is very simple. We perceive the world with our five senses, the sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch and the fifth one, the sense of taste. In every aspect, we are surrounded by infinity.

GALO: What they call the sixth sense?

RK: It’s general, but abstract. But it still comes from the other five.

GALO: Color as you say, keeps mutating, changing—you draw a line with a brush and you want to follow that line if it’s taking you someplace. In all the arts, there’s a point where the art has something to teach us, where it can take on a different life than what we originally thought it was going to be.

RK: Again, to return to this world of color, the most amazing thing in our physical world, color doesn’t exist without an object. It’s always found in an object. Let’s say a green wall, blue sky…it’s a property of an object.

GALO: What about a rainbow, for instance. A shape formed by the water, air, it seems to be an illusion but…

RK: It’s a form, and again, it’s a rainbow — a thing. My biggest ambition has been to return to the world of art, to painting. For me, abstract doesn’t exist, abstract can be an idea, but you always have to start with something, an idea of something concrete. If we see just outlines of a triangle or a square, in nature, we call it a triangle, but on the canvas, we call it abstract.

GALO: I’m always frustrated when I ask someone who’s done an abstract painting, what’s inspired you to start that line; it looks like it’s trying to take shape, into something, so even with a painting…

RK: It’s grounded in something. I consider the human form the most highly organized form in nature. That’s why we can achieve more, because…

GALO: We’re more complex.

RK: Yes. And you can take the human body—it includes squares, triangles, and circles.  Nothing exists without those forms. And then I came to this idea, in painting. It’s an inescapable thing, these shapes. No artist can escape working with those shapes. It’s more difficult to organize those shapes in a harmonious way…

GALO: The challenge is to take the simplest shapes and conform them into a real harmony. Is that what you’re saying?

RK: Yes.

GALO: What you seem to be describing is what a sculptor is dealing with all the time. To take a square and find the shape that has to come out of that. This has been extremely helpful and interesting, Roman. These are important ideas to talk about.

RK: I don’t know how well I expressed it.

GALO: A lifetime of creating art is a big subject. One last question — do you see any new direction you’re going in?

RK: My ambition is to continue in this neo-classical way, to express–not just physically–a beautiful body or objects, but to express modern life, our life, with its dramas and its paradoxes, tragedies; to in short, express our time here. That’s the most difficult part, not just to paint, but to have a soul in the painting.

GALO: In order to express the time that we’re here.

RK: Yes, if I hear music that doesn’t please my sense of hearing, I prefer not to hear it. It doesn’t matter what kind of concert. That’s why I love classical music. Every time I listen to Mozart, it takes you to another world. For me, it’s the visual part of the painting, if there is no visual power in the painting, it doesn’t matter what kind of concept. Why do you paint, if you take a brush and use canvas, and you’re just trying to express concept? The same thing when I eat food, it doesn’t matter what kind of idea the cook had…

GALO: If you can’t savor it?

RK: Still it comes to our senses. And each sense has its own world. That’s my basic philosophy.

GALO: Thank you so much.

Roman Kriheli’s most recent solo exhibit is being shown at The Seti Gallery in Kent, CT through December. For more information on the artist visit romankriheli.com.

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