The starting point of my saga was my expulsion from our Art School, the reason given being my "avangardism". The sensation of freedom and independence filled my whole being. It also happened that just at the same time an opportunity of my participation in joined exhibitions of other fellow - dissidents presented itself. And that was how I found myself a member of the Crimean Fellowship. I displayed twelve of my monotypes. That exhibition was unusual because a lot of artists took part in it and some of the paintings had to be hung right on the ceiling. That was the year of 1985. The beginning.
1991 was the year of discovering the World. I had a feeling that all the doors locked tight for so many years suddenly flew widely open. New wind came, life was changing rapidly. Art or rather attitude towards it was keeping up with the changes. In my turn I had to meet the World, to leave the seclusion of my small back yard and come to the streets. That year I organized my exhibition in Heidelberg. The sister-city relationship between our cities had not yet been formed. Everything was very serious: a TV crew was making a picture, serious newspapers wrote about the exhibition, the Mayor of the city made a speech at the opening ceremony. I presented her (the city had a lady-mayor at that time) with one of my pictures - with two people in a desert stretching their hands to each other. Later I learned that it was because the Mayor had a painting from a Simferopol artists that our city was chosen to become a Ukrainian sister-city of Heidelberg. So says the legend.
