Page 81 - Genius

The ever-growing audiences, who are drawn to
and moved by the work of leon Oks, have no
doubt an interest in leon Oks the man, and the
genesis of what we see and try to understand
about the power of his work and its emotional
impact.

Unlike many young people in today’s digitalized
changing world who have problems finding
themselves, leon Oks knew very early in a
childish, formless way what excited him and
gave him a feeling of intense joy and pleasure.
Not yet old enough to really understand,
he looked at the world around him and was
captivated in a way that leon vividly remember
but find hard to describe. The colors, the
compositions of nature’s beauty, the faces on
bodies, the light and the dark, all touched little
boy’s heart and he knew even then that his
passion for creating art was implanted.

leon was born in a small Ukrainian town of
Zhitomar in the former Soviet Union. He was one
of three siblings (one older sister and a younger
brother). In 1941 when he was two years old,
his father was inducted into the Soviet army
and was soon killed in the line of duty. His
surviving family (including grandparents) was
uprooted from their modest, small house in
Zhitomar and forced to flee over and over again
to safer unoccupied places (which soon became
unsafe). Family endured constant instability and
frustration in a dreadful, hopeless World War
environment.
In 1945 the war was over and they were able to
return to a little house in Zhitomar. It was during
those postwar years (when he was six) that he
began to draw and paint at night in the kitchen,
which became his nocturnal studio while the
family was asleep.

As he grew and matured his need to create
art became inevitability. Without instruction,
he started copying the masters from the small
collection of art books in his home as well as
from the paintings in the art museum. These
pictures, their power silently transferring to his
hand, became his first mentors

 Dream oF sprinG, 2009 OIl ON CANvAS 36x30 IN.
/94x76 CM.
at niGHt, 2009 OIl ON CANvAS 36x24 IN. /91x60,5 CM. 
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