Evdokim Perevalsky

Born in Ukraine, artist Evdokim Pereval­sky moved to Cat­alo­nia in 1997 and cur­rently com­bines his ac­tiv­ity as an artist with teach­ing paint­ing and draw­ing at the Es­cola Mu­nic­i­pal d’Art in Celrà. He has par­tic­i­pated in many local and in­ter­na­tional art ex­hi­bi­tions and fes­ti­vals. We joined him in his stu­dio and learned about the tools he needs in his cre­ations.

1. Palette. This is the real basis for every­thing. It’s where the paint­ings are born, here I find the har­mony be­tween the colours. This one is spe­cial: it came with me all the way from Ukraine more than 20 years ago.

2. Spat­ula: This is the tool for mix­ing the colours on the palette, and to paint. This one is also spe­cial, it was given to me by an artist friend of my fa­ther’s who stud­ied art in Paris be­fore the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion in 1917 and was made by hand. It’s kind of a relic and re­minds me of where I come from.

3. Wa­ter­colours: This par­tic­u­lar box also came with me from Ukraine. It’s the type I used when I was a stu­dent at the Kiev School of Fine Arts , and I still rec­om­mend it to my stu­dents, due to its high qual­ity. Wa­ter­colours are very ver­sa­tile and great for trav­el­ling.

4. Paint­box: This be­longed to my fa­ther, who used it when he stud­ied fine arts and he, in turn, in­her­ited it from his painter friend. Like the other ob­jects, it’s a piece that has been passed from the hands of one artist to an­other; I used it as a child when I was in the fields around my grand­mother’s vil­lage. I still use it to do my stud­ies and notes about colour wher­ever I go.

5. En­graver’s chis­els: I grad­u­ated as an en­graver in Fine Arts, and I’ve de­voted much of my ca­reer to cre­at­ing using dif­fer­ent en­grav­ing tech­niques. These burins are an­cient, in­her­i­tances from dif­fer­ent Ukrain­ian artists, made by hand by ar­ti­sans.

6. Whet­ting stone: This was made by my fa­ther and is ex­cel­lent for sharp­en­ing the chisel. In it­self it is a work of art and an im­por­tant piece in the stu­dio.

7. Blocks for wood-carv­ing: The tech­nique of xy­log­ra­phy is a very old tra­di­tion and one which I’ve also worked on. It in­volves ei­ther carv­ing di­rectly on wood or cre­at­ing print­ing blocks, mostly using the wood from cherry and pear trees.

8. Box with pa­pers and clock-maker’s tools: My fa­ther-in-law was a clock­maker, and in his work­shop there were var­i­ous ma­te­ri­als for re­pair­ing all types of clocks. I have kept them be­cause of their sen­ti­men­tal value.

9. Cut­tings for col­lages: re­cently I’ve be­come very in­ter­ested in col­lages and for my de­signs I’ve col­lected cut­tings from all sorts of printed paper I find in­ter­est­ing and at­trac­tive aes­thet­i­cally

10. Die Kunst. Framed ex­cerpts from the fa­mous Ger­man mag­a­zine Die Kunst. Won­der­ful in­spi­ra­tion of art­work from the past two cen­turies. An­other trea­sure I brought with me from Kiev.