Art is an important means by which I comprehend life and people. I
have always seen something far deeper and more significant in art,
than a craft or skill set for creating beautiful objects. Art
figures in my life as predominantly a philosophical activity, a
mode for investigating the depths of my personality as well as the
myriad ways of the world.
Today, as I create, I follow a genuine wish to connect with
others, to reach their human desires through expressing what I
see, feel or believe. My paintings are visions of a place of
harmony and balance that I discovered in myself and I wish to
share. I call my style “metaphysical romanticism” and believe that
aesthetic experience can foster inner balance and change lives.
For me art is a universal tool for wordless communication. My
creative stance and worldview value parity, the interaction
between cultures, and the power of art to bridge and reconcile
differences.
Oil painting is my preferred media, because of its capacity for
blending and nuance. I use soft pastel palette for compositions
that revolve around the concept of synthesis as a key to the
universal beginning. Realistic references in my paintings are
placed in an abstract context, while their artistic language
strives towards maximum simplicity. Implying rather than directly
portraying, I am driven by the intention to evoke a particular set
of emotions, to trigger a positive feeling. To me a painting has
merit only if transports the viewer beyond the ordinary to another
reality—to a reality that asserts the possibility of illumination.
1996 Catalogue
2006 DVD
2007 Catalogue
2009 Catalogue
2015 Catalogue
2018 "In Search of the Fleeting Light" Book by Prof. Ch. Popov
Vassilen Vasevski’s paintings invite the viewer to revel in
color and form in the way one becomes absorbed looking through
leafless trees at the changing palette of winter sunset. His
works are at once austere and lyrical. Vasevski’s body of work
quietly asserts the confidence associated with the trifecta of
artistic curiosity, drive, and realization. Each of the works
embody painterly execution of a deeply felt introspective
vision.
A visual language emerges when looking at the works presented
here. For example, we see motifs or images recurring in Tao of
Love, Light of Your Smile, Touch Me, Feel Me, and Garden of
Peace. These motifs—outstretched open hands, leaves floating in
space, the hint of a smile, solitary and intimate figures—create
thematic and narrative unity across the works. Yet at the same
time each painting is a world unto itself. It’s the world that
viewers create in their own mind while looking. One viewer might
see the hands and think of Orthodox icons, another might think
of Buddhist sculpture. Floating leaves simultaneously evoke the
spaciousness created by fields of color and the invisible
movement of air and light, thought and feeling that accompanies
apparent stillness.
Visual images and motifs that suggest rather than depict are
characteristic of dreams. The familiarity of Vasevski’s motifs
dispel resistance and enjoin reverie. This is Vasevski’s
distinctive aesthetic achievement: his paintings at once convey
moments of soliloquy, longing, and intimacy and give rise to our
own experiences of them.
We shall not find tragic dissonances, dramatic conflicts,
complex and intricate metaphors, or inspiration drawn directly
from nature in the paintings of Vassilen Vasevski. On the
contrary, he invariably pursues the formation of his very own
signature of simplified plasticity, which visualizes the
underlying substance of the image. While at first sight his
favorite motifs – faces of females in a state of reverie and
self-absorption, birds, trees and leaves – may appear to reveal
their respective object referents to nature, they are not drawn
from life but represent poetic generalizations of obscure moods,
of ambivalent frames of mind, of revelations.
The blend of delicately interwoven objects and spaces projects a
peculiar poetic atmosphere, both generally accessible and
refined enough to please the eye and the mind of the most
discerning audience. The interconnections between backgrounds
and figures are defined by an entire specter of transitional
zones, subduing the sharp contours and similarly to Leonardo’s
sfumato, creating the impression of unspoken mystery. The
specific modes of conveying plasticity – the light and the dark,
the warm and the cold, the near and the distant – are not set
one against the other in contrast, but rather represent the two
sides of one unified organic whole.
Although the lines are not accentuated, the paintings impress
with the exquisiteness of imagery. Dominant are the large areas
of color. What Vasevski favors is not the principles of
classical tonal development, but those of color planes, which –
through their varied combinations – form the composition, the
spatial aspects, and the colorful harmony of his works.