Siberia's Primordial Colors

Sometimes you meet a person and immediately know that you are headed in the same direction. And if that meeting takes place in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and your fellow-traveler happens to be a professional artist, surely adventures await.

Together you tromp through damp, boggy hummocks, along rocky lakeshores, and ford a mountain river… Where are you going? Why?

When a picture begins to appear on a blank sheet of paper or canvas, everything becomes clear. It is quite possible that, without this image, the adventure would not be as interesting… Or perhaps this path had to be trod, so that this image might come into being.

I disembarked from the launch at the Lake Lama Tourist Center, where I hoped to broaden my understanding of the indigenous peoples who lived on the Putorana Plateau. The center’s owner, Oleg Krashevsky, has spent many years assembling a collection of unique items that once belonged to nomads in the region – Nganasans, Dolgans and Evenks. The collection includes ancient clothing, weapons, pipes, animal totem figurines, and extremely old Nganasan and Evenk idols.

Rumor has it that Krashevsky bought it all for practically nothing, or even that he robbed it from graves. Perhaps talk of this sort is responsible for Krashevsky’s sharp temper? In reality, he is only quick to anger with those who don’t give his center the respect it deserves. And it would be wrong to call him rude; he is a strong, well-educated person who is more than willing to share all he knows with anyone willing to listen. He generally introduces himself to guests of his center as the “White Shaman.”

Learning that I was a journalist and one interested in ethnology to boot, Krashevsky allowed me to stay in one of the rooms at his tourist center. I gladly agreed and soon learned that I was not the only person who had arrived at Lake Lama to study his ethnographic collection. In the cafeteria I met a young fellow with disheveled hair, a black beard, and a tenacious, piercing gaze. Within a few minutes we both understood that we were fated to work together.

Dmitry Gusev, an artist, quickly deduced that I was a graduate of Moscow State University’s Geography Faculty (“Intelligent, yet not pale. Since you are not pale, that means you are not from Petersburg”). Fidgety when talking, yet very focused at the easel, Dmitry immediately impressed me as a person who shared my interests and passions.

This impression was reinforced later that day when Dmitry showed me one of his paintings: of the Northern Lights over Putorana Plateau. We looked at it for a long time together, trying to express in words what had been painted twice: once by nature, then by the artist’s brush. Here is how Dmitry recalled it:

I will never forget the time I went to the Plateau to paint the Northern Lights. It was late September. About the 20th, I think. Pretty consistently below freezing. I was trudging uphill with my tent, my painter’s case filled with all my assorted supplies, and the snow was already falling. I reached the Plateau just as it started getting dark. I set up my tent and got out my paints. It was a clear night. The frost hit and the temperature immediately fell to minus 12. I didn’t think this was possible. I had okay clothing and a little gas camp stove. It was just unexpected.

I was standing on these stones right here. All around was pure silence. Somewhere in the distance I heard a landslide and a raven flew overhead… And then, suddenly, the entire sky lit up with the Northern Lights! And I have to say that, seeing the Northern Lights from down below is an entirely different experience from seeing them from up high. Because down below your view is obstructed by the mountains and trees. But the Putorana Plateau is flat and the sky is completely visible from one horizon to the other. The full dance of the Northern Lights extends before you. I would call it ‘the dance of the gods.’

A person is used to the sensations associated with rain and heat, with snowstorms and what not, and he takes them for granted. But when you see the Northern Lights, you look at this movement and you understand that it is not something mechanical. You see that this dance is a manifestation of thought, a heavenly manifestation. There’s no way to describe it.

There were other nights… But that specific night, what happened during that solo trek, is one I will remember forever. The North, the mountains, and that gigantic streamer dancing from horizon to horizon, a half-dome full of the Northern Lights…

Oleg Krashevsky’s Ethnographic Museum is a three-story wooden building. On the first and second floors there are small halls with exhibits, and on the third floor is a library.

Dmitry was most interested in the exhibits. Settling into a comfortable chair on the second floor, he pulled out his sketch pad and set about capturing the ancient objects that hung on the walls. I sat next to him and was engrossed in how tin bells, wooden figurines, and the details of a shaman’s outfit could materialize on the page of a master’s notebook. He laid down the pencil lines in an exacting manner, one right next to the other. After he finished one drawing, Dmitry said that, with sketching, as in anything, one must be able to emphasize the main subject without getting lost in the details.

The Bunisyak River flows into Lake Lama not far from the tourist center. According to Krashevsky, there once was an Evenk settlement on the banks of this river. A recent fire destroyed all evidence of human habitation, yet two wooden idols were left behind. We set off to find them, even though we had no idea what an Evenk wooden idol might look like. Krashevsky did have a few samples preserved in his museum, but the main identifying characteristic of an idol from Putorana Plateau is that they were carved into the base of a larch tree and not intended to be moved from one place to another. Among the Dolgans and Evenks it was generally accepted that, if you chanced upon an idol in the forest, you should steer clear of it, else unpleasantries might follow, meaning sickness or even death. It is considered a grave sin to damage an idol or to disrespect it.

From Krashevsky’s center we walked along the lakeshore to the mouth of the Bunisyak. We had to roll our pants up to our knees to ford the river, which was fast-flowing and very cold. The river bottom was solid, at least. On the opposite bank of the river, as if to compensate us for our well-soaked legs, we discovered wild blueberry bushes. After eating our fill of the ripe berries, we forded another small rivulet and found ourselves on the site where Krashevsky said we should be able to find the idols. The landscape here was starkly different. The bushes and grass had been scorched by fire. Bits of black coal were everywhere underfoot. Small ash clouds rose up with each step we took. Only yellow pines and occasional green willow bushes gave a hint that the forest would soon reestablish itself here.

After several circuits around the site of the fire, Dmitry and I stumbled upon two small, burnt heads. One was far more burnt than the other. The second was scorched only on its lower section. Dmitry took out a pencil and a sketchpad. I got out some measuring tools and my camera.  Soon a drawing of the surviving idol appeared on his sketchpad, and I had noted down its measurements. Completely satisfied with our achievements, we headed back.

The return trip was not as difficult. The wind had died down and the evening sun gilded the edges of the dark blue clouds that clung to the horizon. When we crossed the river, I accidentally got some water in one of my boots and sat down on a fallen log to empty it out. Dmitry laughed, then took out a camera and snapped a few shots as I squeezed out my wet socks. He was not laughing at my expense, but at our situation. Soon enough we arrived at the rocky lakeshore and forgot all about the incident. As we walked, we pondered how nice it would be to open a small ethnographic museum in Moscow. Quite likely, the capital’s residents would be interested in learning about the peoples of the North… But, of course, no building could substitute for the beauty and grandeur offered to visitors of Lake Lama.

We returned to the center late in the evening. A small boat tied at the dock rocked in the lake’s gentle waves. The sky was dark grey.

I tried to draw this scene in my notebook, but the results were not very convincing. It takes a great deal of practice to become an artist. Here is what Dmitry said about his long years of study.

There are three classic art universities [in Russia]: The Repin Academy in St. Petersburg, the Surikov Institute, and the Ilya Glazunov Academy. When I began, I realized that the best place to learn painting was at Glazunov. And so that is where I wanted to go. As a consequence, Viktor Viktorovich Motorin became one of the teachers who prepared me for my entrance exams. I did not get into the Academy on my first attempt, and the second time, after studying with Pavel Petrovich Popov, my second teacher, I got in, and ended up studying there for seven years in the landscape painting studio. It was very interesting. The free education that Ilya Sergeyevich Glazunov gave us was incomparable. It was a building block you just have to be thankful for. Because we copied paintings in the Hermitage, in the Tretyakov, and we studied with very gifted teachers. We repeatedly painted from life. It was a very difficult course of study, and people dropped out every year.

Why are things like that at this institution? Because the school of life is always more difficult than being a student. All the more so, since the life of an artist is one fraught with competition – you must always work with a mind on fire. I began working on the artistic theme of the North while still at the Academy. My graduation thesis topic was Pomorsky Krai and how this severe, yet wildly beautiful territory that nurtured and shaped the Pomors has been reflected in landscape painting. Next, well, as you know, came the Putorana Plateau, Siberia.

When someone asks me, “How is it you ended up in Siberia?” I joke and say that love pulled me there. And it’s completely true. I fell in love with a girl. She was from Siberia, so I went to Siberia. My love for the girl ended, but not my love for Siberia.

A year and a half after we met, Dmitry invited me to travel with him to Southern Siberia with the following words: “Vanya, Putorana Plateau is like a dry, red wine. But Southern Siberia is like champagne. You must try it!”

I didn’t hesitate long before accepting his proposal. We bought tickets to Krasnoyarsk, but the final destination of our journey was the Khakassian village of Cheryomushki – Dmitry rents an apartment in Cheryomushki and travels there from time to time in order to paint.

Prior to our arrival in Krasnoyarsk the weather was not too cold. A feathery light snow crunched underfoot as we walked out of the airport toward the taxi stand.

The road from Krasnoyarsk to Cheryomushki was long. Along the last stretch, we could see picturesque cliffs and the powerful Yenisei River through the car windows. The Yenisei is not yet at its full strength here, but humans have already constrained it with the dam that is part of the Sayano-Shushensky Hydroelectric Station.

The two-bedroom apartment where we stayed was sufficiently modest. Dmitry’s room was full of frames and canvases. Some of the canvases already had finished paintings on them, others were still empty.

On Dmitry’s agenda was plein air studies in the wild, so the next day we headed out to Borus Mountain. It was rather warm when we arrived at the intended destination, and Dmitry pulled out his sketchbook and cracked open a tube of paint. I watched with interest as the colors of the evening scene oozed onto the canvas.

Where I had only noticed dark silhouettes of the mountain and the red bands of the sunset, Dmitry saw different shades of blue, orange, and even green. In the encroaching silence his frost-hardened brush scraped the surface of the canvas, outlining the trees. A few more brush strokes and the landscape was finished. I don’t know how much time had passed, only that we had to carefully feel our way back: the path was practically indistinguishable in the dark of the forest…

We tried to make the fullest possible use of our days in Cheryomushki. In three days, Dmitry managed to finish three studies.

“Working on studies [этюды in Russian] is an unavoidable part of any painting,” Dmitry said when, on the fourth day, we climbed one of the cliffs outside the village. “You obviously have to complete the final easel painting in a studio, yet the essential preliminary stage is observing nature. When you create an image, you see and become aware of colors that are difficult to see with a camera… I have always been interested in my country’s history, its nature preserves, and so I often travel to some wilderness or other. The power of Russia’s open spaces rarely makes itself known in the hothouse conditions of a big city.”

When in Moscow, Dmitry not only works in his studio, but also spends time setting up exhibits in other cities: e.g. Naro-Fominsk, Minusinsk, and Krasnoyarsk. There are three major themes in his works – “Pomor Lands, the Path to the Arctic”; “Protected Siberia”; and “Old Believers.” And for each he has created dozens of paintings.

“A writer speaks with words,” Dmitry says, “a composer speaks with sounds, and an artist speaks with paints and, first and foremost, he creates an image. And that image – the one you see and assemble within the frame of a single painting – is the most valuable thing.”