Dimitar Taushanski's works are as colourful and multifaceted as our lives, a revelation in which each of us can find themselves. They can be both optimistic or sad, humble or bold, portraying the beauty of human closeness and the loneliness among the crowd, life behind masks and our naked selves, the filaments that connect us to our present and past, myths and legends. They make us think and rethink the world around us.

"I'm a self-taught artist, I have no formal education," the artist admits. But this is precisely what helps him move away from the clichés. "There are people who are involved in the same activity their entire life. I can't do that. Every day I look for a new way, a new method, even with the same material, to do something different. My imagination is always at play," Taushanski admits. Under his talented hands emerge graphical works, paintings, sculptures, caricatures, masterfully combining different styles. He has been an artist in cinema, theatre, he has drawn posters. Not a day goes by in which he does not work. "People say - if you have talent, everything is fine. There is no such thing. Work is what matters. When you work hard, things work out," Taushanski says.

He tells us more about his creative process:

“I am very multi-faceted as an artist. I work on graphics until I attain a certain level. Then I move on to painting. I can do it in the same day. And the next day I can start sculpture. Because there is a point you feel you had enough. I stop for a moment and then I go back to what I started. You can't just do black and white. But the graphics are amazing. They show craftsmanship. It is a criterion of whether you have the hand of a drawer. When there is paint, you can smudge things a bit. You can hide a little if you don't paint so well. But with graphics things are different. It is like with sculptures where you have to drive your message using stone, metal, and clay. I also have wood carvings that are very difficult to make, such as when working with stone. There is no room for mistakes there. You can't fix things. I make chisels myself, I invent them myself. Before I get started, I have a mental image of how the final result should look like. Sometimes I make a model with clay to see what it will look like."

Dimitar Taushanski admires Michelangelo for how he used to create his stone sculptures. "This is suffering and ecstasy in one. He's just Olympus. Everything goes down from there," Taushanski said. He is also influenced by the paintings of Picasso, Van Gogh, Rubens, Delacroix, and many other artists. "At first you have one criterion, then you upgrade," he explains.

Dimitar Taushanski's works are born of life itself – the things he encounters along the way, which he analyses and reinvents through his own perception. How long does it take him to create a painting?

“It depends on the particular mood. Sometimes things work out from the start and it goes really well. Sometimes the painting starts to suffer and allow it to take a rest – it takes a rest from me and I take a rest from it. After a week, I turn it around, start again, and things go smoothly. Because in the first moment one sees one things, then after some introspection, one can see a completely different thing."

The beginning of Dimitar Taushanski's path in art is marked by low grades in drawing at primary school. "I painted an autumn painting. I had made it in colour, with water colours. And the teacher gave me a low grade. But I used to observe things a lot and then reflect upon them. I liked to gaze at illustrations of Boris Angelushev, of the old masters. I used to go to the libraries, search works of art and always admired how people with one stroke, with a few sketches, were able to recreate life,” the artist recalls.

Today works of Dimitar Taushanski are owned by collectors from Bulgaria, USA, Germany, and the UK. In 2017, a book dedicated to his works was published in the USA written by Prof. Lolita Nikolova.

English Rossitsa Petcova