In my life I have travelled a lot and these trips have always inspired me to create new works, to find a new style or painting technique. Most of all I like to visit the Mediterranean countries, especially the South of Europe. By that time, I had been to Spain, Italy, and Greece, vacationed on the Greek islands. The only place I had not visited then and the one I was, as an artist, extremely interested in visiting was the South of France––Provence, to be exact.
The first thing that shows up on the computer screen, when you type the word "Provence" into a search box are photos of endless lavender plantations under the bright southern sun. This is the hallmark of this southern region. Kilometres and kilometres of pale lilac, blue, purple, blue-violet or ultramarine wavy rows of roundish lavender bushes run to the very horizon, transforming the locality into a marvellous, fairy-tale landscape. This overall colouristic pleasure is an undeniable reason for painting, a heaven for the artist and the women enamoured of colour and flowers.
So, I decided to use a kind of artistic magic––to paint my Dreams of Provence to help them come true promptly. I had already done this trick with some other countries, that's why I knew that this magic really worked. And so it happened––Dreams of Provence very soon became reality and on my paintings they turned into sweet, happy Memories of Provence.