Just hanging around artists, not to mention the gallery assistants, and the show openings with free wine and cheese, good times. April 21, 1993. – JDW
Suppose Picasso had been a cowboy.
Constantine Cherkas is that man. Arguably the greatest Western painter of our time, his work will be on display at The Vault Gallerie, 510 S.W. Third Avenue, through June 15th. An opening reception for the artist will be held, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., on First Thursday, May 6.
Getting here, Cherkas crossed more ruts than the pioneers bouncing along The Oregon Trail.
Born in Russia shortly after the Communist Revolution, trained at the Moscow Art Academy under Stalin, Cherkas and his wife Kira, to whom he is still married, were deported as laborers by Nazis to war-time Germany. After WWII, Cherkas emigrated to the United States, where he painted rose vases in a Philadelphia china factory. Forty years ago, Cherkas drove his family to a new life in California.
He may not have known the Wild West, but he knew what he liked.
“I was overwhelmed. I thought, My God! I will paint all my life this landscape. And even one life is not enough. Big landscape create big soul.”
The empty spaces of the North American continent are full to the eyes of Constantine Cherkas, for years now a U.S. citizen.
“I remember, I was driving first time through Arizona and I was so excited to see these vibrant and beautiful colors. I thought, I will paint West but I will paint West, not as an illustrator, like other painters painted, but as a colorist. I will show dramatic colors, and mood of the West, not the story, somebody shooting, somebody riding, but the state of spirit when you are here.”
Color is everything. “Without color, you cannot express West. When the light changes, the canyons change, the mountains change and become unbelievably beautiful,” the artist offers with a lover’s sigh in his accented voice. “In the West is light entirely different. It’s powerful and more dramatic. Wibrant.”
Cherkas knew he had to grow as an artist. “In Europe, this kind of a monumental landscape does not exist. In Europe, there is a small creek, a little bush, everything small, but out West, everything BIG,” he says.
“But to paint this big panorama, you have to develop different style. European style don’t fit. You have to find something new to express West FULLY.”
Cherkas has spent the last three or four decades finding that new style.
“When you are born here, you don’t know difference. You think every place is like this. When you are born elsewhere, and you come to American West, you can judge the beauty here more fully. It would be better if Westerners would travel to other parts of the world. Then they come home, and like it here even more.”
Westerners have long placed the value of a picture at one thousand words. Yet we might judge the worth of a painting by Constantine Cherkas in musical notes.
As one artsy-tartsy critic wrote, “The paintings of Constantine Cherkas can be appreciated for their complex but harmonious orchestrations of these notes of color and abstract form. He creates visual symphonies.”
Much of Cherkas’ best work, a magic synthesis of abstract reality, not only talks to you, it sings. Like Guns & Roses doing a Garth Brooks’ tune.
“It’s like playing a musical instrument. To have the palette and the eye in balance is everything,” Cherkas explains. “As a colorist, I convey emotions that can only be expressed in color. Color is for me, just like for Mozart or Bach is combinations of sound. If you try to express in words, then you get banality. If colors don’t work in true balance, then you get bad music.”
“Color and sound have very similar qualities; they evoke emotion,” Cherkas explains. “You have to find your harmonies in color.”
In a grey business suit, Cherkas resembles a member of the Politburo. In faded jeans and a flannel shirt, he looks like Louis L’Amour. A top hand with a glowing paint brush and a neon palette, Cherkas confidently claims to be at the height of his creative powers.
“Many different moments and colors you can put together over Time to create something much more powerful,” offers Cherkas. “And one painting, which maybe seems like one moment, one scene, is really maybe different moments all in one, is many facets of Time all together,”
Cherkas speaks of Time with the practiced eye of a man who has seen much of it pass by. “When I paint, you see, if you put one coat of paint on, the canvas looks cheap. You have to do several layers,” explains the 73-year-old. “Then the layers underneath start to affect layers on top, and with Time it becomes even more beautiful. Because with Time, oil paints become a little more transparent. Time creates a kind of mysterious depth. The idea is, with Time, the color will melt and all will be right.”
“In my paintings, in a big composition, I take from many sketches. But to put them together just like composing sounds. You have to compose everything, put all the parts together so they don’t clash, so that one helps another… ” the artist continues. “You cannot do with analysis. Only with feeling, memory and imagination.”
Cherkas seems to have captured the rainbow in his work, and written a soundtrack for the pot of gold at the end. This is where the banality of words comes in. We must look for new adjectives to describe how the paintings of Constantine Cherkas.
“Colorphonacular” comes to mind.
It’s true. A Cherkas painting will improve, over Time. becoming more translucent. More mysterious. More tuneful.
Come listen to his paintings yourself.
Arguably the greatest painter of the American West since Frederic Remington is a Russian.
“Nineteenth century artists don’t do justice to the West. The West is bigger than illustration, nobody has done it right yet. I want to paint West not like Remington but like Gaugin.”
They Have Free Wine & Cheese, Too
