One man's personal art project - an animal sculpture garden for local kids
Anatoliy, 82 - a retired welder with no formal art training - made his first creature 15 years ago. The kids loved it so he kept on making them - placing them in the garden and in the trees around his home. The garden and trees around his house are filled with owls, doves, storks, foxes, bears, tigers, cats, deer, gazelles, giraffes and assorted Soviet-era cartoon characters. They’re painted in the cheerful pastel colours so typical of Soviet housing projects and parks.
He creates them in his shed from carved polystyrene coated in thick colourful paint. His naive psychedelic folk style could be described as Rousseau-meets-Cheburashka, with a touch of Midsommar. He relies on donations to buy paint and materials. His neighbour, a middle aged woman, sometimes helps with the painting.
I visited Anatoliy’s atelier with my friend Masha Svyatogor, a visual artist based in Minsk. Masha shot a fashion story using Anatoliy’s garden as a backdrop. Anatoliy is a humble and straighforward man. When we met him, he was tinkering with his car but he was happy to stop and chat with us. He seems to be constantly busy with his hands. Anatoliy has become something of a cult figure in the Belarus art world.
