Featured Artist: Boris Kutchukov, Impressionist Bulgarian sculptor
This photo says it all I think (the cat, the skull, the eagle, his countenance) but to fill in the blanks if you like: Boris is Bulgarian and grew up in the rural eastern Europe, which is where he first developed a feel for different kinds of wood and raw materials to sculpt with from nature. Later, he pursued his commitment to art through study at the University of Architecture and Fine Arts in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1947. He then escaped to Germany in 1948 and endured a harrowing time of his life. In 1949 he defected to Paris and married, then immigrated to the United States where is is currently semi-retired, still painting, remarried and living part-time in Bulgaria. He' s been sculpting and painting now for over 40 years, and many of his images have taken the eagle form. A mighty large wooden bear looms and commands the shelf of a cityscape lookout at his daugther's home in Eagle Rock.
"He's a primitive, yet sensitive, definitely masculine, and strongly opinionated artist who feels even to this day that he should have lived in another era." - from his bio
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I heard about him through rave reviews of his sculpture of a grand sculpted wooden eagle which now proudly resides in the Eagle Rock High School (not pictured). He and his daughter came to the opening of the shop on April 1st, curious about its eagle-centric theme. I showed them around and he bought a small wooden eagle ornament; then we set up a time to meet the next week before he returned to Bulgaria. I went to the daughter's home where Boris, now a bit more chiseled and demure a figure, but still as commanding in attitude, painted in the garden; a show of the recent works were hanging on the fence around the yard. I felt lucky to have met such an artist, someone who actually struggled through large obstacles to be an artist, to become one, and to stay one.
a closer look at my favorite of his eagle paintings:
