Oleg Buiko biography
I was born in 1968 in the town of Polotsk, Belarus. As long as I can remember, I have always loved drawing. With pencils. I grew up in an ordinary, modest working-class family, and the idea of studying painting seriously never even crossed my mind.
After serving in the army, I started a family, had my first child, and continued working at a very ordinary factory. That went on until real oil paints from St. Petersburg finally appeared in our provincial town. It was the early 1990s, a time of total shortages. Before that, I had never even seen such paints in real life. That very evening, as I still remember, I painted my first oil landscape on a simple dinner plate. A haystack. And I liked it immensely.
Those first landscapes became windows into a wonderful, colorful world, completely different from the harsh everyday life of a provincial industrial town in the early 1990s. I had found an occupation that truly lifted me up. Every day I waited for the evening, for the weekend, so I could pick up my paints, feel their smell, and let a small miracle happen again. A painting. Clumsy, awkward, but dear and beloved. At that time, I was deeply struck and inspired by this feeling. The feeling of creativity and freedom.
Carried by this wave of inspiration, over several years I absorbed knowledge about painting like a sponge. About its techniques, composition, and art history. From every source available to me at the time: books, television programs, reproductions, conversations with other artists. Unfortunately, there was no internet back then. I painted and studied every day. I went through every library I could find. I could spend the whole night looking through albums of Korovin, Serov, and Repin, reading and rereading them again and again.
Throughout all those years, I was struck by the enormous gap between the ability to feel and the ability to express. Why could I see and understand the finely tuned beauty of Russian nature, its restrained, subtle tones, that delicate “birch calico” atmosphere, yet fail to convey it in paint? Why could Levitan do it, while I could not? But this never made me give up. I always understood that it was simply the resistance of the material to the will of a beginning artist. The resistance of paint, color, form. The resistance of habitual ways of seeing. And that, sooner or later, this resistance could be overcome.
I knew that most great artists were not born masters.
They studied somewhere. Someone shared knowledge with them about color, composition, and perspective. The sum of this knowledge, multiplied by experience and by one’s own taste, is what makes an artist. I understood that painting is, to a large extent, a craft. A body of knowledge and its application. And, of course, love for the work itself. Love for what you are trying to depict.
I would simply like to congratulate anyone who is just beginning this path. Many happy days and nights lie ahead, because the very process of painting brings immense pleasure. Painting is capable of changing a life completely and truly making a person free. Above all, it teaches you to understand yourself and to think. And it opens your eyes even wider to this beautiful world.
After serving in the army, I started a family, had my first child, and continued working at a very ordinary factory. That went on until real oil paints from St. Petersburg finally appeared in our provincial town. It was the early 1990s, a time of total shortages. Before that, I had never even seen such paints in real life. That very evening, as I still remember, I painted my first oil landscape on a simple dinner plate. A haystack. And I liked it immensely.
Those first landscapes became windows into a wonderful, colorful world, completely different from the harsh everyday life of a provincial industrial town in the early 1990s. I had found an occupation that truly lifted me up. Every day I waited for the evening, for the weekend, so I could pick up my paints, feel their smell, and let a small miracle happen again. A painting. Clumsy, awkward, but dear and beloved. At that time, I was deeply struck and inspired by this feeling. The feeling of creativity and freedom.
Carried by this wave of inspiration, over several years I absorbed knowledge about painting like a sponge. About its techniques, composition, and art history. From every source available to me at the time: books, television programs, reproductions, conversations with other artists. Unfortunately, there was no internet back then. I painted and studied every day. I went through every library I could find. I could spend the whole night looking through albums of Korovin, Serov, and Repin, reading and rereading them again and again.
Throughout all those years, I was struck by the enormous gap between the ability to feel and the ability to express. Why could I see and understand the finely tuned beauty of Russian nature, its restrained, subtle tones, that delicate “birch calico” atmosphere, yet fail to convey it in paint? Why could Levitan do it, while I could not? But this never made me give up. I always understood that it was simply the resistance of the material to the will of a beginning artist. The resistance of paint, color, form. The resistance of habitual ways of seeing. And that, sooner or later, this resistance could be overcome.
I knew that most great artists were not born masters.
They studied somewhere. Someone shared knowledge with them about color, composition, and perspective. The sum of this knowledge, multiplied by experience and by one’s own taste, is what makes an artist. I understood that painting is, to a large extent, a craft. A body of knowledge and its application. And, of course, love for the work itself. Love for what you are trying to depict.
I would simply like to congratulate anyone who is just beginning this path. Many happy days and nights lie ahead, because the very process of painting brings immense pleasure. Painting is capable of changing a life completely and truly making a person free. Above all, it teaches you to understand yourself and to think. And it opens your eyes even wider to this beautiful world.