I was born in a village and saw pictures on glass for the first time there, in 1954. My grandmother used to take me to get-togethers at my villagers' houses, where I would look at these magical images on the walls. They bewitched me; I couldn't take my eyes off.

No one knows how this art came to our village. They brought it from somewhere, and people were willing to buy: who would take a picture of cats to the nursery, and who would decorate the house with paintings with pigeons.

They also did this in an interesting way: they wrote on the back of the glass so that it could be wiped clean, and put shiny foil inside to make the picture shine. As a child, I looked at it and thought: “Wow, how skillfully they came up with it.” These drawings were called “videos”, and my grandmother used Polish to say “obrazok”.

Everyone in my family is gifted: my parents were good at drawing, I graduated from art school, and my daughter and two grandchildren are also great at drawing. They say that “nature rests on talented children” — nothing like that!

Art is very contagious. When you have the opportunity to see something beautiful and then want to do it yourself. In general, I love our folk art very much: weave straw and fix it [carved patterns on paper — editor's note].

‍

I think it only takes a desire to become an artist. And a little bit of perseverance, patience and imagination. I ran an art club until I was 70, but then I retired. I gave it to my student. A lot of good kids came to us and it was interesting to study with them.

I am not only a glass master, but I also paint our traditional Pruzhany painting. People sometimes order pigeons to draw for the wedding or give cats to children.

My works are in many museums in Belarus, and you can already find them all over the world: with customers in America, Italy, France, Russia and many other countries.

I traveled a lot to European festivals with my own paintings, but I've never seen such a technique anywhere else. This is ours, Belarusian. Except once at the Jagiellonian Fair in Poland, where artists sold flower paintings on glass. But they were very different from my style.

In 2023, our Pruzhany glass painting was added to the Belarusian list of intangible cultural heritage. I received a message from above that I did not take up such a thing in vain. It is very pleasant that there are still craftsmen and we are continuing our work. And frankly speaking, they value us a lot.