MY WAY

 

Sergey Tsarapkin was born on the 14^th of October, 1962 - he was born on the Day Of Pokrov (УprotectionФ, a feast of the Mother of God which celebrates the protection afforded the faithful through the intercessions of the Virgin Mary).

 

When Sergey was eleven years old his eyesight started to fail. In the fourth grade he already couldnТt see anything from the front desk of the classroom. The same age he wrote his first poem:

 

That damned Hitler

He crossed our borders.

Glory to our soldiers,

That died because of him!

 

They didnТt think about their life, the soldiers went into the fire.

And now Eternal Flame is on that very place is burning!

 

 

 

But the first painting was created by Sergey only when he was over thirty.а The first book of poems was published when he was forty two. By now Sergey has participated in many one-person and collective shows in Russia and abroad. Sergey has more than thousand artworks. They include paintings, graphic art, woodcarving, artworks made of roots. And finally, on the 28^th of April, 2009 a book of stories (prose) was published. Two hundred and eighty pages of the book include own illustrations. So the WORD and the PICTURE intercrossed in a certain point of life.

 

Now letТs Sergey say:

 

УIf try to understand what has happened to me during those forty six years of my life, then one can probably say a lotЕBUT IТm sure that if at that time, in the fourth grade my eyesight wouldnТt fail, then I would have become anyone but not who I am now. The Protection of the Mother of God was always with me. Nevertheless my whole life I felt the presence of providence not as a warm and cozy blanket but very often it was like some mandatory imposed frame which was supposed to take in all my irrepressible soul.

 

I will tell you about only one momentous event.

 

In 1992 during the Lent time I went to the friary thatТs in Optina PustinТ. Then I went back. You should remember those days! Moscow was like a big dump. Woozy people were selling something; they were going somewhere, bringing something. Nobody wanted to learn, work but everyone wanted to trade. And the place I arrived from had a different life. That life was simple but it was sensible and comprehensible. And I went back to Kozelsk. With the blessing of Starets (spiritual advisor) Father Iliya I settled in a small house behind the river across from the monastery. I should say that by the time an orthodox community around Optina was established by the people arrived to that place. Those were families and single people, painters, writers Ц those were the people that were rejected by the new life and that turned to the orthodox roots when searching for authentic meaning.

 

For a few years I have been living with two girls. We had a small community. We were like sisters and brothers. Our spiritual advisor was Father Iliy. The sisters were professional scene-painters, they decided to leave the bohemian life in Moscow. They started to paint icons.

 

Our small house was a shelter for many pilgrims. People stayed at our place, sometimes those who came to the monastery stayed longer. The girls painted icons. I lived according to the canons of obedience for men. I sawed the wood, carried water from the well, put wood in the stove. In spring I spaded the kitchen garden. We planted potatoes and different vegetables. We even had hens, a cat and a dog. In winter the house was covered with snow to the very windows. We took the snow through a small window, melted and used for household purposes. Time passed by. Winter was followed by spring and then summer came. I had a long beard. I started to look like a hermit or a peasant. Every holiday we went across the river to the monastery, every Saturday I went to banya, once every month I went to Moscow to get some money. And everything was the same - day after day, month after month, year after year.

 

-а Is it really my life? Ц I asked myself. -а IТm over thirty. I finished the University. I sit here in a remote village in the backwater district of Kaluzhskaya oblast, pick the soil with a spade, chop wood and feed hens. Why do I live? Is that the meaning of my life?

-         To save soul is a good thing but the temptation of my own inability was sitting in me and made me restless.

But I didnТt know what I wanted. The spiritual father was careful as my bad eyesight limited me in almost everything that the monastery had to offer. What was left was just to accept, pray and live slowly and wait what god would give. And god did. It happened when we lived our fourth winter in the village. A winter day in a village is short and boring. At 10 in the morning the sun looks in the window but already at 4 in the afternoon you have to turn on the lamp. You have time to only bring in the wood and water. In the morning you put the wood into the stove to keep the house warm the whole day.

Girls cooked some simple food. As a rule it was some porridge which we ate the whole day. It was very quiet in the house, like in a grave. The girls worked all day long in their rooms. The cat sat on the stove, mice were heard under the floor, the dog yelped in the hall. I felt that I was slowly going crazy. And I wasnТt afraid of that. It was even interesting to look at myself from outside. I walked from one corner of the room to another. When pacing about the room I looked into the part where Katya and Olya worked again and again. The boards that only yesterday were just covered with levkas were turned into icons today. Holy faces were revealed on the icons: Ambrose of Optina, Seraphim of Sarov, Sergius of Radonezh. Holy glow was already seen in the faces of the girls. And I went to the barn where the former owners kept their pigs and I dug in the pictures and paintings that were brought by the sisters from Moscow. It was their creative dowry. And all that treasure was dumped there. Paintings and sketches were getting damp, eaten by mice and examined by me. I was supposed to use the papers for starting the fire in the stove. That was the fragment of the previous life that was rejected by them. As for me I couldnТt come round after those visits to the barn for hours. Was it really possible that few strokes of a pencil on a white sheet of paper could turn into three-D, four-D, one hundred-D space where another life began? They were the windows where you could peep at strangerТs happiness. I sat in a cold barn in the house that was forgotten by god with half-mad smile and peered into the windows with half-blind eyes and could see a different life.

I already found a hook in the barn and a rope. It happened that evening. It was dark and I was pinched by cold when I returned from the barn into the house. Girls were sleeping. I leaned over the warm stove with my back and closed my eyes. Wind was howling in the chimney, mice were cheeping under the floor, cat rubbed over my leg. Noise was surging up in my head.а And suddenly I heard a clear voice. I shuddered. There was a man standing in the door way that led to the hall, he was only a few steps from me. It was a short old man with grey beard and quick eyes.

-         Sergiy! Ц the old man called.а - Depression is a sin.

-         What should I do then? Ц I asked.

-         Draw!

-         I canТt.

-         Draw, Sergiy! Ц said the old man again.

 

And then I came to myself. I was sitting on my hunkers at the stove. I stood up and looked into the hall. Nobody was there. It was snowing outside. I took a piece of coal from the bucket, put a big Easter candle on top of the stove and suddenly saw: village huts that were hardly seen as they were covered with snow and only the roofs stuck out. A road covered with snow. There was a big field or a snow-covered lake. A forest and a building on the other shore. It was the wall of a fortress or a town. An old man was walking along the road. The light from the vacillating candle and the grey and yellow shadows were falling on to the wall of the stove. The coal in my hand started to hectically stroke the picture that I saw. By the morning the white stove was successfully painted by me. That was my first creative experience. And it wasnТt very important that I had to paint the stove white again. The girls gave me paper. The coal for my first works I took directly from the stove. I still display the first pictures painted with coal on yellow paper. That was the time when I started to learn to see the outside word. The lost world was coming back. How could I talk about outside world before as 2-3 meters made everything turn into blind milk?а No, the eyesight didnТt come back to me. But I started to see. I think it was the time when my inner sight started to develop. Painting returned everything that I couldnТt see to me. I was taught to model real pictures.

 

Painting came into my life when I was over thirty. I have never felt a mission to be a painter. BUT the language of lines and spots gave me the ability to see again.

I have been experiencing a crisis of my vision for the last few years. ItТs not enough for me to see. I want to understand what I see! And that was the point when the lines and spots began to give the place to the word. The art of word and combination of words bring the reality which is enormously rich with images, patterns and ideas into this world. And my painting experience wasnТt lost. I keep on painting; illustrate my books and books of my favorite authors.Ф

The catalogue indeed shows the way how the images published here came into this life from the chaos of spots and lines.

 

A friend.