site.btaBTA Interview: Deyan Valkov's Passion for Art Enables Him to Paint without Paint

Deyan Valkov's passion for painting is so strong that he can work under any conditions, even without paint. "I can find something in nature and invent a picture," the artist told BTA in an interview. "I paint round the clock. I can do it at home, and I can do it in a restaurant."

Valkov's exhibition Perspective can be viewed at Sofia's Art Club Diplomat until the end of February.

He uses mixed techniques, organic materials, pigments, glues, paper, oils and acrylics. "I put soot and ash into my works because they are organic pigments which make a difference in terms of colour, stain and impact." Coffee is another alternative material he uses. "You need to make a chemical bond to let it stay on the canvas," he noted.

The exhibition Perspective is curated by art manager Desi Zafirova and actor Niki Sotirov. Valkov said: "It is a mix of the things I have made in recent years. It has been a long time since my previous exhibition. The works vary from figurative art, realism, to superabstraction, landscapes, portraits."

"I encourage viewers to suggest titles to my pictures, it makes them happy. I rarely say what is what, but in my mind I always have a title to every picture," he said.

Every artist wants to influence people, to make pictures that others will like, according to Valkov. "I always have doubts, I am full of doubt, never sure whether my creation is good or not, whether it is good enough to be displayed. There were paintings I did not want to show, but people bought them. It is a colourful world out there, everyone has a different taste," he said.

The artist plans to start making very large paintings. He looks forward to the warmer part of the year, when he can work outdoors. "I do not know what will come of it. Sometimes I want to do purely abstract art, but they turn out figurative, a body, a portrait which I would have never painted deliberately. And sometimes I want to do figurative art, but it becomes an abstract painting. I never know what the result will be."

He works on the floor or on a table, that is, on horizontal surfaces. He literally saturates the painting and sometimes waits for days for it to dry.

Deyan Valkov was born in 1971 in the Danubian town of Silistra. He studied at the Sofia Art School and the National Academy of Art, where he majored in mural painting. He has held dozens of exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. Valkov's art bears diverse interpretations. It derives energy from the clash between figurative and abstract art.