Vitebsk painter Oleg Skovorodko is the confident and vigorous master with own hallmark and a sight at the world, which works are noted by violence of the juicy colours strained and formally constructed by a composition, live communication with the nature. Near its cloths you do not cease to be warmed. In them there is a warmth and sincerity, attention to immemorial problems of human existence. The artist investigates a life round itself: draws villages with the archaic wooden houses, different by big simple forms; huge totem trees over which white cloths-clouds are spread; the panoramic landscapes painted by gentle colour combinations; still-lifes with classical attributes of the material world - colours, vegetables, fruit, greens, ceramics... His works are distinguished by capacious, by materiality, formal stylisation, figurative symbolism. The artist does not feel sorry for sonorous chords, denies calmness, slackness. But he does not exaggerate contrast of colour combinations, softens pressure with semitones, shades. Thus confidently and safely he generalises the form. The artist does not adapt to tastes of buyers and market requirements. The main thing for him always was and remains aspiration to state love to relatives to it to people and a native land.
The artist lives in constant dialogue in due course and with itself, it is simultaneously open to the world and is closed in itself. His works cannot be perceived rectilinearly. In easel pictures Oleg Skovorodko builds difficult spatial compositions, monumental on sounding, common-decorative under the plastic decision. In them the vital philosophy of the author in which the basic place is occupied with questions momentary and eternal, terrestrial and heavenly, past and today's is reflected. In his cloths there are no chronicles, but there is a life, there are persons of people who live in the spiritual consent with itself. It is the higher world, it is torn off from private and insignificant. In Oleg Skovorodko's cloths breath XX, already and XXI is felt centuries. The rod system of his art is difficult, but in creativity germetism is not present (it here is impossible by definition), is not felt even aspirations to it.
«Everything that has no tradition, becomes plagiarism», - philosopher Evhenija D'ors-and-ravira wrote. The statement is especially important concerning the modern art. Last decades aggressive the horde of images made by art is not become more dense and active almost than the real nature. And it is valid, anything completely released from traditions today it is impossible to create - all the rest remains only direct loan and self-deception. «Having learnt rules, you achieve success in changes», - the Chinese painter Shi-Tao spoke.
Creation of Oleg Skovorodko is the especial phenomenon in the Belarus art. In his works successfully incorporate many operating time of different art schools, classical and vanguard, influence a modernist style, vibrating dabs of impressionists, but shifted on soil of the Belarus environment is felt. The figurative system of products of the artist is constructed on sensual and emotional perception. His pictorial works are filled by difficult associations, they are not perceived unequivocally. Still the student of art-graphic faculty of Vitebsk teacher training college he drew rural expanse, this romantic kingdom with distinctive semantic and colour poetics, the conditional composite organization of space of a cloth. However in a picture «Autumn candles» usual at first sight the rural sketch with a goat grazed on a meadow about the rather heavy woman in a scarf to whom clings on the other hand graceful animal, is perceived by reasonings on the magic actions connecting a birth and death of the person.
Large picturesque cloths of the artist testify to a meeting with the interesting creator having the expressive style, a plastic arts of graphic language -emotional, expressional. Images of his works seem mysterious and mysterious, and here has no value the genre chosen by the author: the artist excitedly draws female images, flowers in vases, rural houses, landscapes where the nature, and reembodied in waves of colour and harmony essence of the author dominates at all. The artist is interested in city kinds. But he is not interested in problems of a city life as considers its too pragmatic and not standing the attention. He draws old small streets and monuments of Vitebsk in old time, and behind an easel on the old area. Oleg Skovorodko is allocated with skill to embody not only a plastic image of the past, but also to find signs of that creative power which changes the fallen asleep signs of momentary existence of things.
Attractiveness of works of Oleg Skovorodko is placed in their balancing between accuracy of the form, a plot and abstract disclosings of this form. What, apparently, there can be more concrete, than a portrait? The artist seizes essence of the person, but does not transfer it classically. He goes from emotional impression, of an image which should excite, adjust on reflexions. The woman, the artist argues, this instant of beauty, and this instant it is necessary to notice and embody at least on a cloth. There are unreal extended, as if moving female figures, long swan necks, the small heads, the underlined bared female forms from here. But in female images of Oleg Skovorodko is not present opened of erotic. It could break off roughly a crape poetic beauty which gives to each heroine mysteriousness and attractiveness.
Impress his still-lifes with subjects of a rural life, simple and genuinely-sincere, filled with sensation real being. But with special feeling of delightful pleasure Oleg Skovorodko draws landscapes. Rural, with abrupt infinite hills which he remembers since the childhood. City where streets are filled in by mysterious light of lanterns that deprives of their dullness and a superfluous urbanization. Landscapes of the artist are attractive, unusual. They are written as if from nature, but during too time are filled by own imaginations and impressions. The artist transfers which he seen on a canvas, cutting all superfluous, minor, time. At people persons, then people disappear. Buildings lose windows, but get reflexions, instead of the traditional motley sky - a deaf plane, and trees become similar to shades. If he draws a familiar landscape, he, apparently, specially aspires to avoid all signs on which the spectator could learn a concrete place. In landscapes for the author maintenance is not the main, and mood becomes the main thing. Oleg Skovorodko is not natural artist. He draws the pictures agrees internal to representations about things and people.
Last years the painter has deviated from concreteness of a separate subject and a plot, from locality of a figurative language. In Oleg Skovorodko's works the free elements of colour dominate. His pictures are original difficult «colour imaginations» where in unusual structural connections fresh plastic ideas are read. The artist recovers the nature, aspires to construct a composition through a plasticity of colour. His pictures will not name «symphonies», is faster to them the designation «jazz improvisations» approaches.
«Amalgam» is an abstract, constructivist and at the same time deeply plastic, aesthetically verified pictorial work with the multiple-valued and organically connected dramatic art of a composition. The picture can be compared to a piece of music, which on the essence the abstract. Canvas contemplation creates «video hearing» illusion as perception process joins also our internal ear for music. Visions cause simple, but conformable to association music, and any another accompaniment is not necessary.
It is obviously that the artist concerns an easel picture as to difficult visual object. Oleg Skovorodko uses such composition methods, a rhythm, light, the space simulated by light and a shade thanks to which the plasticity of subjects is most expressively shown. Echoes powerful «sezan» life displays are felt in mysterious depth of his pictures. At all colour decorative effect colour of the cloth fundamental principles, especially in the background decision, has that severe density, powerful «rumble» heavy red-claret green-brawn shades which usually make «sezan» scale. This generality of radical system of painting of Oleg Skovorodko with basic codes of the Transeuropean art culture is given by sensation of contact of his creativity to world processes. The stylistics of some products cause associations with products of symbolists. However and here the steady picture plane does his picturesque imaginations by the independent value, an independent art microcosm which exists under own art laws.
You feel special pleasure when you examine an impressive surface of works of Oleg Skovorodko. Usually as the invoice understand such condition of a surface in which it appears to our eye and feeling. Today this concept is some «noise» which is created by paints much more widely and is perceived by our consciousness. Cloths of the Vitebsk master in the big degree have to it: you perceive gold grains of the cloth, crackling whitewash, velvet depth black, hoarse brawn colour and unexpectedly pure, hardly coldish red colour. The big plats are penetrated by brush lines, sometimes a surface almost boils, but is never split up.
With a time chromatism of works of the artist all becomes stronger than time, he builds coloristic decisions of a cloth on sharp, even risky connections powerful, colour stains ready for explosion, often uses local planes. Outlines of thise planes are precisely verified and introduce in work powerful, concentrated and even a solemn rhythm. The artist puts before itself difficult coloristic problems. His works even in reproductions look majestic is a certificate of monumental, scale composite thinking.
Oleg Skovorodko's pictures certainly belong to those products that establish new scales in the Belarus art. They create an especial microcosm of the artist, capable to reach feelings and soul even the unprepared spectator.
Natalia Sharangovich,
Skovorodko Oleg Alexandrovich · 2010 
