As a rule, the relationship between a spectator and a picture become clear after the first glance. If not indifference it is a delight. Then a spectator becomes thirsty for a picture. The instantaneous impression, as if you hugged the Universe, remain in memory for a long time. It is sensuous, incorporeal, and not filled with literature until the look of spectator begin falling in the abyss of artist. Actually, the first riddle is hidden in the way of thinking, consequently, in the way of creating: like a Demiurge Petro Bevza represents not things, but elements – the light and the colour. There is no physical space in his works. The paintings serve as the portraits of archetypes (for example, a pyramid is an archetype of Monad, the Ukrainian house is an archetype of home, the bridge is an archetype of the way). The artist keeps authentic only linear picture, by giving tone and color to the power of elements. You feel sensuous image on canvas as a result of struggle of elements (like between heaven and earth in a storm!). "Portrait likeness" to the archetype creates for your feeling an own myth. The Artist delivers picture from its objective qualities and physical features. He stripps the archetype to re-wear, always hiding under the clothes his first mystery.

 

After he has experienced the first (sensuous!) mystery of painting, a spectator always willy-nilly begins to think of what is the subject of image? Where is the plot? The series of "Homes" appeared as though by chance, when an artist was finishing large series of pyramids of cycle "Presence". But, as known, there are no chances in art. The powerful form of a Ukrainian hut, wich is an inheritance of generations, is represented as an archetype of home, as a reference point of man's life and at the same time point of destination. The artist experienced its secret and comprehended as given. From time immemorial a hut is part of Ukrainian landscape as a traditional accommodation of Ukrainian peasants. Today it symbolizes singularity in the context of global urbanization and unification. It is a sign of Ukrainian and a code to self-identification. In the conditions of crisis of identity the artist aims to find spiritual support in this simple form. Reference to the centuries-old cultural layer does not burden a picture, but gives depth to her. In fact, Petro Bevza enciphers a new actual riddle in immemorial form.

After the first sensuous impression had already passed and a viewer discussed the subject of an image, always there is a question: "How it works"? It is the third secret of Petro Bevza. The impressive depth and complexity of color, its quality as a physical thing, its tactility and sensuality are the results of long working on the method of painting technology. In Renaissance Europe the quality of color in a picture was really equated with jewellery. Petro Bevza accepts the challenge of the best masters of Renaissance by trying to comprehend color and texture as the main criterion of professionalism and also as means of artistic expressiveness in new context. Remaining the professional of high class, he creates the new secret of color, his own.

Even the pioneer of avant-garde music Arnold Schoenberg emphasized on the necessity of creation of own secret in art. He wrote: "It is very important, that our creative spirit makes riddles like those, that are around us. Our idea should try not to solve but to decipher them. So we must obtain not the solution of a riddle, but new method of enciphering and decoding". Thus three secrets of Petro Bevza turn his painting into drama for the Great mystery between a viewer and a painting.

Volodymyr Bevza