Antique Roman mosaics with variety of shapes and colors, wall decorations of Roman homes and remains of ancient public buildings that are fine specimens of sophisticated Roman art have been found all over Bulgaria. Such findings are cultural heritage of great value that requires a lot of resources and care to be preserved for generations to come. In most cases, the mosaics are exposed outdoors, in depopulated areas, and carrying them to museums is a difficult and often impossible task.

Aesthetics of the ancient stone mosaics with the figures and miniatures on it have attracted Katya Lekova for a long time. She is a chemist and university lecturer by profession, but also a great connoisseur of classical works of art. She herself knows how much work and inspiration is needed in creating a work of art and cannot even imagine that masterpieces of antiquity could somehow be lost in the future.

She has devoted a great deal of time and personal resources to touring and filming places where even small fragments of mosaics exist. Her mission does not end there. After shooting them, she recreates them on glass using a special technique. A great challenge for the self-taught artist is achieving durability and quality of the works.

"I had worked on glass before and made different images of fragments of paintings by Vladimir Dimitrov – the Master, Impressionists and others. I created paintings in bright colors that add richness to the image. What I have achieved thanks to my professional experience in chemistry is a solid primer on the glass over which I can paint. I am pleased that there has been no cracking or change in the colors of the drawings so far. I turned my love of art and in particular of Roman mosaics, into my mission. As a lecturer at the Department of Chemistry of the Blagoevgrad University, I have contacts with people with various interests, but when I was talking about mosaics, my colleagues told me they had no information. Then I decided that it was worth promoting them and finding a way to show more Bulgarians the richness of our lands. Not everyone has the opportunity to travel and see the preserved Roman mosaics. I am very impressed with the ancient Villa Armira in southern Bulgaria, near Ivaylovgrad. I strongly recommend that everyone goes and sees it."

Last year, Katya Lekova was able to visit a forum with an exhibition of the Capitoline Museums from Rome presented at the Archaeological Museum in Sofia. She was impressed by the photographic exhibition of the mosaics from the lands of Bulgaria. This gave her a valuable opportunity to get to know the places where these works of art are situated.

"I am now preparing to participate in an international forum in Plovdiv in April related to Bulgaria’s cultural heritage. There I will present a glass mosaic that I recreated after a visit to the island of Sicily. It is similar to those in Bulgaria because the same masters worked in our lands, too. When it comes to history, we Bulgarians talk more about the five centuries of Ottoman oppression and we often miss paying attention to our heritage from Antiquity. When I look at preserved mosaics in Devnya, in Plovdiv, in Stara Zagora, in Sofia, etc., I always think that we should be proud of being Bulgarians."

English: Alexander Markov