Aleksandr Faley

The artwork of Ales’ Faley strikes viewers with its courage and expression. The audience is often even more stricken when they learn that the artist lives in Belarus and works as a blacksmith.

Faley was born in the village of Zadveya in Belarus in the winter of 1959.

He has always practiced drawing: he started by creating posters and advertisements, and after he began painting nature in the open air, and finally he decided that he needed a professional education.

He graduated from the Vitebsk Technological Institute and got a diploma with distinction in clothes design.  

During his student years, Faley enjoyed painting most of all. At that time the Minsk Museum of Contemporary Art bought one of his first works for their collection.

Faley’s early abstract works were laconic, but his artistic manner varied over time and has become increasingly more expressive.

It is difficult to say that Faley ‘draws’ or ‘paints’: when the artist creates a graphic work he looks very much like a shaman. At that moment he listens to the voice within him and his hand uncontrollably moves over the paper applying colour. He entwines the restless rhythm of colourful spots with words, the titles of his works and, frequently, with his own artistic name, Miron.

Faley’s art is similar to the approach of twentieth century artists. Nevertheless he brings the rollicking and careless Slavic temperament to the Western abstract expressionism. At times it seems that Faley’s pictures can be heard singing joyful, ethnic tunes.