Javad Mirjavadov, Artist

Javad Mirjavadov rarely put his thoughts and feelings on paper with words. Usually, they were blazoned across canvases in passionate hues which he drew from the sun. Today, his paintings brighten museum walls in Baku, Moscow, Paris, Rome, and London, as well as the private homes of such celebrated thinkers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Arthur Miller and Chinguiz Aytmatov (Kirghiz writer).

Published here for the first time in English are excerpts from his diary which provide provocative insight into his character and the evolution of his work.

Excerpts from Mirjavadov's Diary

Heart Attack. January. It seems to me that all the winds, blowing in the Absheron Peninsula, sift through the cracks in the walls and windows in this hospital ward. At night the cold wind howls like a ghost outside my window. It was on such a night accompanied by such wailful sounds that my birthday arrived: sixty.

My eyes won't close in sleep. Thousands of thoughts race through my mind. I have no visitors. The whole world seems to have forgotten me. No one needs me. Only my wife-the most pitiful and miserable creature in the world-is standing day and night over my head, guarding me from death's grasp.

I've died a thousand times in my paintings and now to die one more time seems so easy. Here I am, lying in the filth of this ward...I'm not complaining and criticizing anyone-I've been a happy man. Dying was sure to happen sooner or later. It's destiny. The most important thing is that I've never betrayed my conscience. And I never will. I've lived just as I've liked.

I've spent almost all my life out in nature, enjoying and loving everything created by God. I've drawn my colors from the sun and copied the blazing splash of these colors on my canvases. I've mixed it with the spirit of my heart and soul . . .

I must have been living with all those senses inside me since my childhood, when I used to walk barefoot in my grandfather's garden in Fatmayi-a village near Baku. It was then that those senses crept into my blood from the scorching soil through the hot summer sun's rays and awakened my spirit. Those senses grew together with me and matured. I carried them through my youth up until today. Nothing can smother those senses inside me. They have given me strength, bursting my brain . . .

And now, look at me, my feet are hardly able to support me. I pray to God, beseeching Him to give me time to accomplish my last works. Is there another life beyond this one? A world, ruled by wisdom or manifested in some other shape? Do other worlds exist? Everything is relative in life-the world which we can see, and the world which we cannot see. Maybe, we return to this world after our death and when it sometimes seems that we act against our will, in fact, it is our memories ruling and directing us . . .

A painter is someone who can foresee the future. A painter ranks art, his creative activity, higher than life itself. Art always precedes science. It opens up broad horizons for thinking and assists people in understanding themselves and their surroundings. It helps them see realities, which escape a normal glimpse, a naked eye. An artist is a prophet. Painting is not a profession, it is a gift, conferred by God...

We start crawling on a carpet. It is then that the rich variety of colors and ornaments of carpets get engraved on our minds leaving their traces there. And who knows, maybe, our way of thinking as an artist starts getting shaped from that time onward . . .

Painting teaches me to realize the essence of life. Painting is insanity and will power at the same time. These two notions, of course, contradict each other-