It was hard to start: no academic skills, just huge desire. I never liked to draw from nature. “Fantastic” artists like Dali didn’t interest me either: their undisguised wish to shock public annoyed me. I started to draw my impressions from Boris Pasternak’s poetry. I drew and cried: I was infuriated by my own ineradicable tendency to “design” – that is to embroider in order to present the best advantages of the drawing, to fit to tastes of audience. My pictures came out weak and superficial. Finally, the day came when I realized – I can do nothing.

As usual, I plunged into depression. In reality it looks like this: you sit or lie with your eyes shut doing nothing. Incidentally, if you stay that way long, you may see something – even with your eyes shut. Visions come – bright, unusual. I remember, I thought then: what if I try to draw these visions? I ran the risk of doing. Those first sketches struck me – it was something quite different from what I have ever seen. And what was the most important thing – it was in my power to picture them!
 

In a certain moment during a psychotherapeutic course he suggested that his patients should draw their dreams and fantasies. He wrote in his work “Aims of Psychotherapy”: “…It is done to produce an impact. The process of materialization of the image forces a long and detailed consideration, due to which its impact is revealed. This method makes a person independent in his creative work. Drawing himself he also becomes able to form himself. In endless images he tries to exhaustively picture what acts in him – in order to find something always unknown and always strange – the deepest fundamentals of our own soul. Due to this such changes of positions and values, such removal of the centre of gravity take place, which I am unable to describe. One may liken it to the Earth’s discovery of the Sun as a centre of the other planets’ orbits and its own terrestrial as well”.

Such kind of drawing reveals archetypical images of unconscious. “This way her (the primitive psyche expressed in archetypical images – my remark) claims which disturb conscious are being dissolved or satisfied. Painting alone is not sufficient, however. In addition to this, emotional and intellectual comprehension of images is necessary due to which they not only become understandable but can be also morally integrated by conscious. Moreover, they must be interpreted synthetically”.

Following Jung’s advice and resting upon his method of dreams analysis I started studying symbols of my dreams. The results were shocking. I felt there was something inside me which doesn’t coincide with my usual essence: it lives its own life and has its own aims. Suddenly I felt that my first task was to establish contacts with this “something”.

I think like no other means psychological approach promotes maturing of an artist’s personality. Psychological problems are like obstructions in the soul. Only after dissolving them one may hope that light will reach a soul.

“It’s no use to praise and to preach light when nobody can see it. It would be much more useful to cultivate the art of seeing. Because it’s obvious that many cannot establish the connection between sacred figures and their own souls; they cannot see what correlating images and in what extent exist in their own unconscious. In order to make those images visible, it is necessary to clear the way for the ability to see. Frankly speaking, it is a mystery for me how it is possible to attain it without psychology, without touching a soul. (As far as questions dealing with human efforts are concerned here, I don’t take into consideration acts of divine grace which are beyond the humanly significant)”.

Contacts with the inner world helped me to see things more clearly in the outer world. A huge revaluation of former values occurred. There is only one authority for me now – it’s my inner essence. I am responsible to it. It makes me responsible. And this “new” responsibility coming from within extends to all my life.

In fact, usual life and creative work merged into one. They don’t exist separately from each other. I haven’t realized all my potential yet. But there is not feeling of desolation and senselessness anymore. I have a clear feeling of a task. I live with this feeling.