We were lucky to catch up with Alexander Kryzhanovskyi recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alexander, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

My art practice has been going on for about 7 years, the first three years I couldn’t make a full time income from my art and had to work a regular job, first as a bartender and then as an assistant curator at a local gallery. About 4 years ago, I realized that my art became more confident and high-quality through constant practice, and as soon as I felt it, I decided to quit and devote all my time to my career. At first, I earned little and it was barely enough to pay for the rent of the studio and housing, but I was sure that I had made the right choice and soon I had my first collectors and buyers, and I also started participating in exhibitions, which also had a positive effect on my work. I never wanted to speed up the sales process, I think artists should first of all focus on the quality of their work and its representation to the audience because these things will be important in the future career. I noticed that real artists are rarely in a hurry and this allows art to live in its own dimension of time, perhaps the dimension that is actually real, unlike the automatic rhythm of social life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am engaged in visual arts, the main products I make are painting, graphics and ceramics.
The conceptual part is important in my work and I write descriptions for my series and usually at exhibitions I write comments for each work so that the viewer can see as wide as possible the range of my observations. Through my artistic practice, I reveal important issues of human existence, and I am particularly interested in our collective past, subconscious and dreams. I believe that these things are unfortunately ignored by modern people, but they have a great impact on the quality of our existence and it is possible that global problems in the world are growing precisely as a result of the excessive rationality and materiality of modern society.
When communicating with friends, collectors or clients, I try to create a favorable field for reflection, so that life includes as many sides as possible and previously overlooked details become noticed and important.
My artistic practice is quite universal, because it combines many different elements, both visual and conceptual. I am proud of the fact that I have found my way in which I am developing and I hope that through art, as many people as possible will be able to find important answers for themselves and ask the right questions that can become decisive and help everyone who strives to achieve the desired goal.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most pleasant thing in my work is the opportunity to be alone with myself, delve into important topics and create things that can tell something to the author and the audience.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

It very much depends on the country, for example, in Ukraine, the cooperation of artists with various types of business is developing, and this leads to the fact that people begin to notice the creative world around them even more and give it an important place in their lives.
The best initiatives for the creative industry are holding exhibitions, residencies and grant programs for the implementation of large-scale projects that are difficult for the author to finance on his own

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexander_kryzhanovskyi?igsh=eDJmeTZtczVxNWRq&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011201135058
• Other: portfoliohttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ux8POUNTEzB1hSrq6su4HoA47E8dA3oI/view?usp=share_link