About my future Georgian exhibition

04.09.2022

My second trip to Georgia and the second with sketches will take place soon. Georgia is diverse and beautiful in all places. The sketches from the trip and the collected photographic material and memories will allow me to expand the Georgian series to 25 works. This time there will be more mountains, protected areas and less Tbilisi. Although I will be in Tbilisi at the end of the trip, but I will be forced to submit a request for the export of my works to the Ministry of Culture of Georgia before Tbilisi, so I am unlikely to be able to write there. Such a series of works can be exhibited in a small chamber hall by the end of the year.

A rather complicated route will allow me to cover a little more than last September (Tbilisi, Kvariati). This year there will be the Church of the Holy Trinity in Gergeti against the background of Kazbek, and even if the driver forgets to take me from the mountain, I will have a unique opportunity to meet the sunrise together with Kazbek. ))) If such an opportunity does not present itself, then I will start in the evening to Mtskheta and the next day I write from the mountain of the Jvari monastery at the confluence of the Kura and Aragvi and in the evening, if I have time, the sunset mountain from below by the Kura River. On the third day the driver pick me up in Mtskheta and take me to the capital of Svaneti, Mestia. There I take a driver and drive even higher into the mountains along a very beautiful and somewhat nervous road for another 45 km to Ushguli.There I will find a beautiful Svan house in Chazhashi with balconies and views of the towers. Chazhashi Fortress was the winter residence of Queen Tamara. For two and a half days I will absorb the Svan culture and, apparently, sleep little to catch the beauty even at sunset, at night and at dawn. ) Then I start back to Mestia and catch drivers to Zugdidi and Batumi. From there I get to my hosts in Kvariati, relax a little, swim a lot, finish sketches, write mountain streams and the sea. I photograph all the sketches and send them for export permission, that this is not a Georgian treasure, but mine. ) From Kvariati, I come at night for the Nativity of the Virgin to my favorite Georgian courtyard next to the Sioni Cathedral, already captured on the sketch, which is now located at the Georgian courtyard in Gruziny in Moscow. Perhaps I will have time to write another Tbilisi or Mtskheta sketch, without including it in the export certificate, and I will visit monasteries in Mtskheta and museums in Tbilisi. Along the route, I will track the images of St. George on icons and frescoes everywhere, including Svaneti.

May the Lord help me collect this wonderful material.