If you want to see a miracle, go to the mountains - says folk wisdom.
Artist Dovran Hydyrov is a master of mountain landscape. A native of the Balkan velayat, he and his father, artist Amangeldi Hydyrov, walked all the mountains in the vicinity. And the mountains revealed their unprecedented beauty to the tireless travellers.
Dovran has an unusual manner of performing his works: he depicts mountains with a palette knife. He applies paint in pieces to the canvas, which gives the image a rough relief surface and makes it as close to reality as possible.
As a rule, Dovran Hydyrov's landscapes are deserted. Usually, they have only two characters - majestic mountains and the vast sky. Moreover, the sky, unlike the mountains, is never calm, it always looks dramatic, which adds expression to the landscape.
Dovran Amangeldiyevich has been teaching at the Balkanabat Children's Art School for 23 years. An interesting fact: at the age of 10, he himself first crossed the threshold of this school. The school helped develop the student's extraordinary abilities, and in 1992, in his senior year, he won the Grand Prix in the State Competition for Gifted Children in the painting category. The high praise for his work strengthened Dovran's desire to become a professional artist, like his father. And that same year, he went to Ashgabat to enrol in the painting department of the Turkmen State Art School.
Living and studying in the capital, visiting fine art exhibitions, meeting artists - all this broadened the horizons of the student from Balkanabat. But the mountains still remained at the centre of his work.
Today we do not stop admiring the works of Dovran Hydyrov. The painting «Mount Mergen» amazes with its majestic steadfastness. The radiance of the sky in the painting «Gaytarmysh Ata» seems to foreshadow a miracle that is about to happen. The painting «Canyon» evokes delight from the uniqueness of nature. An interesting work «Durdyhan Obasy», in which the author depicted a village in the mountains, and chose the autumn time, when the foliage on the trees acquires an ochre hue. From this hue, the village merges in colour with the mountains and represents a single whole with them. The mountain village is, as it were, under the protection of the mountains.
It is noteworthy that many of the mountains depicted by the artist have holy places, and, as a rule, this is done unnoticeably, and they are not immediately identified in the picture. Perhaps the author wanted to emphasise that all mountains are sacred. But there are other works that are specifically dedicated to holy places – «Gozli Ata», «Idris Baba», «Paravbibi».
The work «Balkan Juniper» makes a special impression. A seed carried by the wind sprouted on the top of the mountain and for many years, under the biting wind and scorching heat, defended its right to life. Even now, despite the bare roots, scorched by the sun, the Balkan Juniper has turned green in the upper part, striking with its resilience and love of life. Surely, these properties were endowed to it by the Balkan Mountains.
In Turkmen fine art, the author who dedicated his work to the Garrygala Mountains is well known - this is the People's Artist of Turkmenistan Annadurdy Almamedov. Art lovers will be especially pleased to know that he has a successor - Dovran Hydyrov, whose work is based on the Balkan Mountains. We gratefully accept their works that reveal the amazing beauty of our native land.
