Tzvetan Kolev’s paintings are narratives of men, saints, and angels. Walking in unknown directions between tiny churches, fields, tables set with lovingly painted bowls and pitchers, watched by colourful birds, cocks, hoopoes. Accompanied by texts written in letters as small as themselves that need patient reading. Painted on cardboard, canvass, or paper, but also on a headboard, village door, or some panel. Always with tenderness mixed with some irony and a lot of sadness for the disappearing original Bulgarian life that used to make friends between men, saints, and angels.

They are echoes of the invisible world where past, present, and future are intertwined. Geographical maps of time beyond the three times. Pondering over the divine in the human. Visions. Parables.

Krassimir Iliev