When people ask me what medium I am working in, I always hesitate. I love printmaking and specialize in monotypes, but I equally love stone-carving and sculpture in general. In recent years most of my projects happened to be in painting (because color is so meaningful and so seductive), but probably, underneath it all, drawing is the most important thing for me. I draw almost constantly. Ultimately, to draw is to connect with the Essence of the Image. Some images cry out to be painted, must be in color; and some images equally demand to be monochromatic. Some images just need to be carved. The image comes to me first, and it decides what it will be: drawing or painting or print or sculpture. Sometimes it is great to have a stand-alone work—and sometimes it is interesting to have preludes and postludes to one image, characters traveling from one work into another, so that a series emerges.

Born in Russia and having spent my first 21 years there, but now having had lived more than a half