Close-up: Bulgarian Artist Atanas Marincheshki was born on 3 April 1965 in the village of Kostievo in the region of Plovdiv. Until 1992, he worked for the police making facial composites of criminals based on witnesses’ testimonies. He left that job of his own will, and devoted himself to painting. His tableaux are to be found in private collections in Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, etc. On 8 February Atanas Marincheshki opened an exhibition of his works at the Art Gallery Forum in Sofia.

- You are a self-taught artist. Is there any specific event that triggered your talent and interest in drawing?

- A triggering event? There’s no such thing in my life. I have been drawing since my early childhood years. My father also used to draw. Under communist rule, he worked as an artist for the propaganda. Perhaps, I have inherited his talents. But my father never had the chance to fully develop his potential because he gave up that job. But if we are to look for genetic inheritance, I have got his talent. When I was 12 or 13, I used to paint big oil canvases without having a teacher to show me how it’s done. However, if you expect me to say that I woke up one morning and a supernatural feeling dawned on me, you will be disappointed. Everything I have achieved is the result of hard work and long years of practice. In my younger years – I am now 50 – there was no much access to information, but we had albums with reproductions of great works of art. As a child, I remember I used to copy the works of famous Russian artists Shishkin, Aivazovsky, and Levitan, and their works still impress me to this day. I believe, Russian culture remains unsurpassed, and there is always something one can learn from it. When one feels drawn by something, and has the feeling for painting, and has something to say, it does not matter whether they have studied or not. The world is full of people who make art without having received any formal education.

- Your family was against your studying at the Academy of Art. Why?

- My trajectory is particularly interesting. Having worked in the police, it was more logical to become a lawyer, or a prosecutor for that matter. But art was my childhood dream. And also it was more logical that I became a portraitist, and not a landscape artist. However, my father worked on an important position, and when I told him I wanted to study at the Academy of Art, he did not let me do it. I guess, he wanted to protect me as a parent by saying an artist cannot make a living, and all artists are bohemians. Perhaps, he just wanted the best for me. So, I graduated the police school in Pazardzhik. But drawing remained my passion, and when I began working in the police, I started making facial composites of criminals based on witnesses’ testimonies. It was a revolutionary approach for Bulgaria at the time. Until then, we had only seen that in US movies.

- But why a police officer – was that a family tradition, or you did it out of a sense of justice?

- Back in those years, parents interfered a great deal in the lives of their children. Now things have changed. I have a daughter, and I cannot imagine telling her what to study or do for a living. But back then, children used to obey their parents, and my father decided to direct me to that occupation. And so I began compiling files with images. Now, there is a computer programme that parcels the human face. But the person operating the programme, has to be a trained artist, which is usually not the case. In principle, one is trying to assemble the face using the description, but when you are not an artist, things don’t work out as they should, and all computer based facial composites begin to look alike.

- How many of these facial composites did you draw? Were you looking for the psychology, the human story behind them, or just for physical resemblance to the description?

- Twenty-five years have passed since I became a full-time artist with 20 exhibitions, but I have the feeling that even when I am 70 or 80, people will ask me the same question over and over again. Back then, there were no computers in the police force, and everything was hand drawn. There is a crime. A witness comes. I get a call. The witness starts describing the perpetrator, and I begin to draw the portrait. In later years, I started collecting photos of people with various facial expressions and features. Of course, I have always strived for maximum resemblance to the description, so that the portrait I have made can be of use to the detectives in catching the criminals. I realised also that women had a better visual memory, and that they remembered the tiniest details, whereas men couldn’t recall much.

- Why are there no people and human faces in your paintings? Are you disgusted by human nature?

- No, I am not. At the beginning of my artistic career, art critics and gallery owners labeled me as a surrealist. My paintings used to be more philosophical, somewhat darker and more mystical. But like all artists, I changed with the years, and came to new realisations about painting. So, I started paying more attention to nature, to the sea and to architecture. I began looking for certain romanticism in my tableaux. That is why Man was gradually driven out of my paintings, and is now present subconsciously, on the side. To be honest, I am less interested in people as an object of painting nowadays, because recently I have discovered new things. I used to draw exclusively in my studio before, but after my first plein-air, I rediscovered nature, and realised that there were things worthy of being painted, and deserving of greater attention. You don’t have to just paint what comes from your imagination, because imagination gives birth to monsters. I find it boring to paint the same tableaux over and over again. I have various interests and I look for different things, and my next exhibition might be completely different from the current one. I am not a prolific artist. I paint 20 to 30 tableaux a year, whereas some of my fellow artists produce 200 pieces. But I can’t do that, because my paintings require a lot of hard work. My process is very slow.

- Do people buy your paintings? Are you an expensive and fashionable artist?

- I am trying to make a living out of my art. If you are into some kind of art, somehow material things are not that important to you. Do actors and poets have enough money? No, but this is our job. We keep going. Artists have never had it easy. Otherwise, I am a happy person, because I don’t live in Sofia, but in a village 10 km away from Plovdiv. I have a big yard and a huge studio, and I tend to the garden, I grow flowers, trees, and vegetables. I live in a totally different world, far from the hectic everyday lives of other people, and I have no intention to leave my realm of freedom and harmony.