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Rock - star Dmitry Snake and
his way into art

Not everyone knows but rock-star, music producer, and director of popular Russian bands such as Gleb Samoiloff and The MATRIXX (thematrixx.ru), NAIV (naive.ru), MAD DOG (maddog.ru), Radio Chacha (radiochacha.rf) is among other things, a talented artist with his own unique vision, however in our opinion, his work embodies his rock and roll roots.

How long have you been drawing, be it real pictures or digital, and what inspired you to start?
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. As a child, I was more interested in the military theme, one might say I was a battle painter! It came in handy later when serving in the Soviet Army. In 1988-1989 during my service in the GSVG (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany), I designed the entire territory of my self-propelled artillery regiment. Ranging from posters, with new uniforms just being introduced, to grandiose battles of the Second World War and portraits of Lenin.
After the army, during a period of great interest in the USSR from Western countries, I drew a lot of various small things that were to be sold: nesting dolls that were imported to Europe; boxes «Under Fedoskino» and so on. And then began the period where I created copies of various paintings by the Dutch and Flemings for the New Russian elite.
 
In parallel, I always created something for myself. Which has always been some kind of junction between realism, surrealism, and even at some point, hyperrealism (there was even a period of steampunk and supremacism).
I spend some time studying in an art school but quickly lost interest. It was more important for me to master techniques that I found interesting and to express my ideas. 
Although I mostly paint in oil on canvas, I can easily switch to other techniques like, for example, colored pencils or acrylic. I even tried to master digital art, but I didn’t manage to draw on the computer at all — I’m old-fashioned in that way and prefer paints, brushes, canvas, and paper!

What inspires you the most, where do the images come from, are they all in your head, or are you drawing something that already exists, but using your vision? Or perhaps, a combination of all the aforementioned?

I embody a mixture of images that live in my head and sensations that are born already in the process of work. It happens that the idea of ​​a picture, already in the process of being worked on, can be transformed. A slightly different vector appears and the idea shifts. This is an uncontrollable process, a stream of consciousness. Moreover, in the process itself, the idea that I was planning to implement in traditional realism suddenly becomes more of a «poster», in fact, pop art or vice versa. It’s an exciting process.

December 2020
by Lil Safonova