Painter Vladimir Fomin

About the Florida Series

Dedicated to Alexander Boguslawski

Thou shall not make thee any graven image – says the Bible. And yet, for Vladimir Fomin, Florida became an idolized multifaceted image, which, glorified by the artist’s brush, brought into the real world amazing images of fauna and flora of the American South.
Having visited this paradise once, he wanted to return there. The return was preceded by two years of work on the Florida Series . Native animals, birds, and fish, seen during the artist’s travels around the state, filled his consciousness and were transformed into paintings.
Not surprisingly, the first work in the series is called Two Roses . It emanates a magical aura of life’s celebration. Fomin received an invitation to become a part of this celebration from his friend Alexander Boguslawski, professor of Russian Studies at Rollins College and the person responsible for the idea of the exhibition of the painter’s works at the Albin Polasek Museum in Winter Park.
Cat that Walks Alone and the Red-haired Cat are paintings about the artist himself. His fate is loneliness, his cross – on the one hand--creative independence and on the other—dependence on procuring the means of existence. Walking through the quiet streets of Maitland at night, the artist petted unknown cats that appeared on his path out of darkness and vanished without a trace. They were astonishing creatures because they provided a warm welcome, but, at the same time, challenged everything around.
Tiger’s Head (Mandala), Jaguar’s Head (Mandala) and Panther’s Head (Mandala) were inspired by the specialty license plates on Florida’s cars. Of course, there are no tigers in Florida and the jaguar is a mascot of a football team. The Florida panther, however, still highly endangered, has found protection in Southwest Florida’s refuges. Those drivers who are not indifferent to the cats’ survival, show through the plates their support for the preservation efforts and their understanding of the problem.
Motifs of “speed” exist in almost all pictures of the series. The paintings seem to evoke a kind of “jazz” and “rock” feeling. This is most vividly seen in Puma in a Ford, Panther in a Mercedes , Pink Panther in a Cadillac, and Leopard on a Bicycle . But in the artist’s canvasses everything is topsy-turvy: the cats are behind the wheel, they rule the world of men, cars, and houses. When we love someone, mentally we always like to exchange places.
“When I drove for the first time through Orlando” – recalls Fomin – “I thought that there people primarily buy and sell cars. The main business was auto sales. In front of a service station I saw mannequins representing an Angel and a Devil. At one moment instead of people speeding down the highway I imagined their little brothers behind the wheels of cars. The signs announcing 25-35 miles per hour speed limits posted at the entrance to Winter Park and Maitland and supposedly testifying to the concern of the people with the surrounding environment, in reality point out that the owners of beautiful homes and cars found for themselves places similar to those provided for the lucky endangered species. But this is just a human point of view.
We never know, how we could best protect and love what we love. Someone decides what our life will be and we cannot change it, as we cannot change weather. We force our way of life upon others, on those who, like us, would like to have something different than what was forced on them.”
Fomin’s works about animals are symbols of human passions, framed in lubok form--the unique style developed by the artist. They combine ideas inspired by Walt Disney entertainment parks, the organic part of today’s America, with the artistic expression of a particular moment--a day from the painter’s life--namely his birthday celebrated on Russian Old New Year (January 14) in the United States. Images of Disney World rendered in the style of Russian lubok were born after a meeting with Robert Radock, chairman of the Florida Alliance for Arts Education and a high ranking official of Walt Disney World. He organized Fomin’s visit to Epcot and Animal Kingdom, which became the foundation of many works in the Florida Series.
The highways leading to Walt Disney parks stuck in Fomin’s memory because of long caravans of cars with lost or disoriented tourists, family trailers speeding to attractions located around Orlando, accidents, and road works. The artist developed a feeling that he found himself in a place where one can see too much, in a “rush hour” point on earth, where the forces of amusement are stronger than the cosmic forces.
The magnificent stylized processions of the animated characters in parks, parades consisting of the mix of costumed people, animals, and birds, and the technical devices used to produce unbelievable visual effects became for the artist a dream that reappeared. The parade characters seemed to have stepped down from Fomin early canvasses based on his experiences in childhood, and characterized by great simplicity and imaginative nature of images. The very first cycle of works created by Fomin was devoted to fairs, circus performances, park attractions, auto rallies, air shows, and music shows. The series was distinct by its fantastic carnival images combining games and life. Many diptychs of the cycle compositionally resembled colorful garlands, endowed with single dynamic rhythm typical for the world of street celebrations.
In the new phase of his creative biography, Fomin again embraced the ideal world of childhood, goodness and joy, but the “American” spirit appeared in his characters: they show greater complexity of forms, “Floridian” bright color scheme, highly developed plasticity, and dynamism of compositions.
In his soul, the artist is an eternal child. He dreamed about celebrating his birthday in Disney World, but he celebrated it twice – according to Moscow and Florida time--during two parties--one organized by Dr. and Mrs. Paul Licata, and the other by Nick and Carol Andreyev. The birthday of the artist falls on the Russian Old New Year, January 14. After the Russian Christmas, which the artist celebrated in a plane over London, Fomin, accustomed to real winter with snow, experienced even stronger emotions when, to the accompaniment of horrible shower, thunder, and insane flashes of lightning, he celebrated his 43th birthday.
On these two occasions the artist found himself at spontaneous concerts organized in two refined homes, where he heard guitars, balalaikas, and bandoleon, listened to the blues, and watched a professional performance of the Argentinean tango…
Under the influence of these emotional events, the master created on canvas greatly varying improvisations. For instance, in the Florida Series, the painting entitled The Valdai Dream, based on the motifs from the novel Between Dog and Wolf by the famous Russian writer Sasha Sokolov, whom Fomin met at one of the parties, occupies a special place. It is done in pure Russian style—as a typical lubok with refinements characteristic for the avant-garde style of the artist. The circular composition and blue-silver tones of the colors are supposed, at least partially, to render the head-spinning linguistic experimentation which the book epitomizes and the poetic nature of the narrative that deals with four seasons, the Volga, the village, and something mysterious, sometimes called the Russian soul.
Basically, the most vivid moments of the artist’s life become the foundation of the creative process. The artist, unlike an ordinary man, is able to render in his work history and development of those moments, instantaneously freeze them and join them together. He can recreate the whole picture from fragments of his memory and transfer thousands of fantasies onto one canvass.
That was the case with the Rhinoceros. On the one hand, the picture shows clearly a Disney influence (the monumental concept, the use of fairy-tale rather than naturalistic features, the use of symbols), on the other—it is a phantom out of the world of Salvador Dali. Earlier, Fomin read the memoirs of the great surrealist and saw some of his exhibits. In Florida, he visited the world-renowned Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, where among the early works of the great Spaniard he found examples of pure lubok. It should not be surprising that he decided to offer a gift to his former idol. In art, a dialogue of creators is always inevitable and the artists’ ideas always intersect.
The fancy outlines of Rhinoceros that soars up from some depth resembling the chaotically placed hieroglyphics, but in reality being a refined incorporation of the name of the Animal Kingdom into the earthly aura of the animal, is a gift to one of the metamorphoses, to an irrational divinity, a fetish worshipped by Dali. We know that the genius considered the rhinoceros’ horn the most surreal object in existence, and he identified it with himself. The visit to the museum in St. Petersburg also became an impetus to create a gift to Miguel de Cervantes. Dali painted 10 watercolors and created 36 graphic works based on the motifs from Don Quixote. He identified the writer and his hero with Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the New World (both died in poverty and in prison), and, again, with himself. He proposed that the fates of all geniuses are linked with a cosmic thread.
The gift to Cervantes and the gift to Sasha Sokolov (The Valdai Dream) were incorporated into the Florida Series not by chance. Both pictures are linked by Florida, a place where the painter met the living and the dead who, according to Dali himself, were given the gift of hearing the music of the heavenly spheres and the singing of angels.
Driving through Lakeland, adorned with the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, the author of the series contemplated the thin line separating things created by human hands and by nature. The animals of Florida on Fomin’s canvasses, organically incorporated into interiors of human existence, resemble the houses designed by Wright and beautifully harmonizing with their natural surroundings. Perhaps Fomin even found in his paintings analogies to the unfinished gothic castle created by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona. There is something in common between the bright multicolored tiles used by the Catalan architect and the figures of Fomin -- rainbow-colored, fragmented, floating, and moving beyond the frames of the canvas, figures forming simultaneously a vivid mosaic that resembles an image in kaleidoscope. They are as inimitable as bright fireworks in the night sky.
A master of ornament, Fomin could not fail to notice that the shows in Disney parks, besides being based on well-known animated features, were mostly stylized to reflect African and Latin-American culture. Numerous associations generated by this topic gave birth to the paintings titled Panther’s Leap, Bear’s Leap, and Flamingo Dance. They were created in colors common to Native Americans and featured ornaments stylistically close to African art. The ethnic character of these works is obvious. Thanks to the “flaming” colors, emphasized detailing of space, and patterning of images, they achieve the effect of movement, freedom, and ecstasy providing the environment for the “children of nature” depicted by the artist.
The photographs taken during the African safari in the Animal Kingdom inspired Maiden on a Giraffe and Maiden on a Jaguar. The artist photographed his wife once on the background of a galloping giraffe and once just about a hand’s distance from a wild black cat. On one of the photos taken during the madcap trip on a bus through the places where the exotic animals lived, the wife’s face and the head of the giraffe, their bodies, came so close that from the artist’s memory appeared a statuette from the Bardo Museum in Tunis, where an unknown sculptor 200 years after the birth of Jesus depicted a woman riding an ostrich.
Fomin always did something similar in his series, but in Florida he found topics he had dreamt about for a long time. The paintings Alligator’s Leap, Maiden on a Crocodile, and Turtle show the inhabitants of countless rivers, lakes, and swamps that make Florida famous. A Fox, A Bear, and Florida Hare are the inhabitants of the forests and highlands of this warm, humid region. All of them are Fomin’s conceptual experiments with the popular animals of the southern USA.
However, Maiden on a Sea Turtle, Flight on a Manta, Maiden on a Dolphin, and Egret’s Dance should be considered the culmination of the development of Florida images. These sunny, optimistic paintings, together with the Sea Horse and Fish seem to be lovely figments of imagination generated by the visit to the aquatic parts of Epcot and Sea World. The artist had a chance to participate in shows with orcas, dolphins, and mantas that allowed the visitors to pet them, observe the mysterious life of creatures locked in large and small aquaria, feed the sea animals and birds, play with them.
A recollection of a trip to the Gulf of Mexico and relaxing moments spent in Tampa and Clearwater caused the appearance of the monumental Pelican. The artist saw the huge majestic bird a few feet from him when he walked in the white fog along the beach’s sand blending with the milky sea foam. For a while they even swam next to each other along the shoreline.
So attractive is the illusion of the existence of everything that the artist invented and so natural are his animals placed in human environment that the lubok series created by Fomin could be coveted by the movie studios located around Orlando.
In his genre paintings, Maiden in Winter Park, Pink Panther in an Orange Grove, Dachshund, and Circus, the attributes of the real world are idealized but quite recognizable. The fantasy world of Florida lives in Fomin’s works its phantasmagoric life.

Svetlana Gromova



	Vladimir Fomin: fomin@onego.ru