The Unseen Art of Russian Artist Guennadi Boiko

Art is blooming, hidden in the forgotten crevices of a New York, where artists from every country on earth pilgrim to Lady Liberty’s open arms.

I was greeted unabashedly and whole-heartedly with the same sort of open-armed squeeze from the talented painter, watch designer, drawer, and artist-of-many-shades, Guennadi Boiko.

Hurrying me into his Brooklyn apartment, I found myself quickly seated at a kitchen table surrounded by knick-knacks and antiques both from his motherland of Russia and pieces he found here, in the United States. Instantly, Boiko had a skillet on the stove, merrily preparing me breakfast: a mussels and brie omelet. When asked about his works, he immediately became an open book of wisdom. His frustration with today’s art world pervaded the kitchen.

“Modern art has choked the market. You can sell art for a pathetic amount. People don’t spend to hang something on their wall unless it is a good investment,” he professed. The myriad of oil paintings hanging in his apartment, unseen by the public eye are a direct result of this phenomenon.

Born in 1967, the Russian native grew up in Saint Petersburg. He attended an art school for painting, art history, and graphic design, where his love for art became simultaneous with breathing. This passion would advance and mold itself into a possible career choice for Boiko.

But it was not until 1991 that he came to America, hoping only to visit his American sweetheart instead of pursuing a fruitful artistic career in the renowned art mecca of the world. A few days after his arrival, the relationship ended, but Boiko never went home. Instead, he moved to Pittsburg, Pa. with his half-brother, where he quickly taught himself English and continuously painted for three years. He became so proficient in English and accomplished in the art world that he was offered teaching positions as a summer art course instructor at Pittsburg University and Carnegie Mellon University. Dabbling in a slew of odd jobs, he saved enough money to supply each new work. He sold many of his paintings in Pittsburg and built a small following. Just as he had done in Russia, Boiko began accumulating private clients to commission new pieces. However, his clients often became restrictive in their expectations.

“If you can live as an artist, you sell you,” he explained. According to Boiko, very few artists are able to do exactly as they wish with commissioned artwork. As a result, he became increasingly frustrated with the limits he was given by clients and became anxious to leave Pittsburg.

Soon, the artist met his wife-to-be, Emily, and the two moved to New York City. He continued painting but picked up a number of more odd jobs: he landscaped, worked in construction and gardening, cooked as a private chef, and worked in a bookstore.

However, despite his hard work ethic, Boiko sold no paintings in New York City. For 10 years, he sold watches for a living and stopped painting for a time. His limited free time turned to drawing.

“For me, drawing is my spiritual investment,” he said, gingerly placing a steaming plate of eggs and mussels before me. He shared his belief that the art world is completely oversaturated with young people interested in the arts. “Every high school [student] knows Adobe,” he explained, stressing that the value of well-crafted art has diminished because of technological advancements. According to Boiko, the significance of art as a personal growth tool has dissipated. “As for my view, art is essential for any harmonious personal education, a key to self-expression and profound communication with all. It might, and yes, often does go a step further than language or political structure. Now I just paint when I want to.”

As he poured me tea, he described the organic need humans have to produce any art.

“It’s a necessity to create, whether an omelet or a drawing. Energy just boils up in your spirit and you just spill it out,” he said.

And spill it out, he has. Boiko’s apartment walls are covered in large paintings, which he has amassed over the years. His works vary from shapeless explosions of color to rigid forms resembling an otherworldly reality. He has never had a motivation for painting. He simply derives his influence from an inner impulse, an inner voice of himself that he allows to glide onto his canvas.

“We explore the world looking outward — the stars, the planets. But if you look inward,” he said, gesturing to his heart, “you find infinite potential…It’s scary NOT to do it.”

His meditation within himself often leads to the incredible fusion of color and soft forms present in his works. He does not always mean for his pieces to suggest anything at all, but rather hopes the viewer will derive whatever they wish from seeing them.

“Art is totally unnecessary,” he stated simply. He does not feel art is meant to be any specific “something.” In fact, to him, “it is a luxury. There is no need for it to even exist. Art, unlike breathing or sleeping, is not a life-supporting function. In other words, we do not need art to survive; it is a pure luxury of self-expression and self-development for an individual, highly reflective of a particular time and culture; [it] can contain a great deal of historical evidence, and therefore, ‘unite’ people throughout history.”

However, this has not stopped Boiko from creating breathtaking works of art with only his canvas and brush. For him, the process of painting or drawing provides clarity of mind and spirit. The ambiguous still life portraits that wittingly cross into surreal images hang vibrantly colored, but gathering dust, in his apartment. Pictures resembling plants and pots and instruments hang in beautiful azures and clay colors or blood orange and aqua — a private display of the artist’s outlook and passion. In fact, Boiko feels compelled to create art, whether he is paid or not. And while he would love to sell any of his paintings or all of them, he holds no expectation for the latter.

“Hope means expectation. When the expectation is broken, you’re broken,” he said.

Boiko does not desire a contract, as he believes it is only a leash and a list of ramification offered to an artist. So, onward he paints without diligently searching for buyers or sponsors.

Once I had cleared my plate, he walked me around the apartment where I “oohed” over every piece. Canvases hung framed in nearly every room. The library had a stack of unframed pieces hung on top of each other. Some of the large canvases were framed, several were not. Few of them were titled. They were mostly abstract pieces resembling images of still life exploding with color. Boiko wants to leave the interpretation of the paintings to the viewer, rather than forcing meaning upon them. So, for him, each painting is an expression of his being at that moment in time.

He showed me to his children’s room where a vibrantly colored, ambiguous sunset beamed on the wall. Sandwiched between the wall and this painting hung a second pink painting resembling leaves specked with dew, ranging from powdery to rosy to fuchsia pink shades. His entire apartment resembled this room: walls nearly collapsing with rainbows of color and canvas.

One wall held multiple pieces that were hung sacrilegiously, one on top of the other, just left to dangle beyond view. Lifting multiple pieces to show me, he shared, “I cannot explain why I haven’t been painting. I feel like there is infinite time ahead.”

Consequently, his paintings continue to hang unseen by anyone besides his family and friends. And though his story is not unfamiliar to other New York artists, he presses on, caring for his children and wife, practicing yoga daily and drawing whenever the mood strikes. His determination to explore humankind through his art is not stifled, only uncertain for the time.

For him, his truest expression of himself is in the acrylic paint his canvases display joyfully. “I live among my art,” Boiko said. Maybe one day, he and his family can live on his art. For now, though, he is happy to explore and share his individual existence with his brush by himself.