Soviet-born artist Daud Akhriev is searching for the words that will express his thoughts. He says his U.S.-born wife’s Russian is better than his English, and as he talks, he uses his hands to help coax phrases out of his mouth. The pause is brief, and Akhriev continues to explain the idea behind his painting of a Moroccan fisherman. In the large canvas work, the man is reclined in a cobalt blue boat, and has a tranquil expression, despite being surrounded by a spray of squawking seagulls.
Akhriev says the man has found his place in the world, and is at peace within it, despite the disturbance around him. “You have your path. If you know where you are going and why, then nothing will distract you. There will be noise around you, but you will continue to follow your path,” he says.
Akhriev was born in 1959, and studied classical painting and drawing for 14 years, including eight in St. Petersburg, Russia. Every day of those years can be seen in the thousands of stunning strokes that form the picture of the fisherman. But there is more to Akhriev’s paintings than the surface aesthetic that brings to mind the works of the old masters. Like many artists, his paintings expresses his perspective of the world around him. That viewpoint is as bright and illuminating as the sunlight that pours through the glass ceiling of his Williams Street studio on clear mornings. Instead of focusing on the darker aspects of human nature, Akhriev prefers to emphasize mankind’s better qualities.
“Humanity has a beautiful heart. When we’re at our best, there’s nothing better. When we’re at our worst, well, I don’t want to show that side. I want to show the best human qualities,” he says.
Dignity is another common theme in Akhriev’s work. A painting of a group of women walking together on a collective farm in the Soviet Union is astonishing in its depiction of human nobility. Akhriev took summer classes near a collective farm, and can recall how the women would would laugh, tell dirty jokes, and poke fun at the artists. He says their work was hard and their pay was unfair, but the women “lived healthy.” While Akhriev likes to accentuate the positive, one can find darker threads running through his work. One piece depicts a fatigued man walking along a path surrounded by a thicket of branches, his destination unclear. “The idea is that everyone is a wanderer. We have our path. Sometimes, things go well; sometimes, it’s day by day,” he says. In another painting based on a photograph of his family, Akhriev has snuck small dramatic scenes into the spaces betweemn his relatives, each one memorializing a detail from that person’s life. A horse is visible above one family member; next to another; Akhriev has tucked a burning house.
Akhriev points to one of the men in the painting and shares a page from his family history. “That’s my grandfather. We don’t know where he was killed. The KGB took him, and then he died.” Akhriev has not finished the portrait of his family. From time to time, he’ll ask his mother, who lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, to tell him something about the people in the painting, and she’ll give him fresh inspiration for the spaces that remain to be filled. The painting of Akhriev’s family employs a different style than those of the Moroccan fisherman, the women on the collective farm, and the man on the path. While Akhriev is grounded in a classical approach, the ideas behind his paintings dictate his tactics.
“The idea always comes first, and then I have to find a way to approach the idea that will be effective. Someone might say the painting isn’t similar to my other ones, but that’s because the idea called for something different,” he says. Allowing theme to determine method gives Akhriev’s body of work an element of unpredictability. It also pushes Akhriev to develop new skills. For example, there came a point in his career when he decided to learn to sculpt. He’s now trained in monumental public art, and is the artist behind the two large bronze sculptures that occupy either side of the entrance to the Market Street Bridge in Chattanooga. Two more are nearing completion in Atlanta, Ga., and will be arriving in the Scenic City soon.
“I was thinking about how Chattanooga has developed over the years. We wanted to be a part of that, so I thought of the four seasons, of something beautiful, and made a proposal,” he says. Akhriev’s work graces more of Chattanooga than the Market Street Bridge; he also has murals at the Collegedale Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Samaritan Center and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. In addition, people around the U.S. can view his art. His work is on regular exhibit at Miller Galleries in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Winter Park, Fla. He also has paintings at Turtle Gallery on Deer Isle, Maine, and has participated in group shows in New York, London, Zurich, and Oslo.
Akhriev is accustomed to receiving praise for his work. In 2007, the Oil Painters of America gave him an award of excellence, and Akhriev placed second in Greenhouse Gallery’s International Salon in San Antonio, Texas. He also received an International Artist Award of Excellence at the Oil Painters of America annual juried show in Missoula, Mont. Akhriev also enjoys sharing his passion, insight and skills. He’s taught summer courses in landscape for the Florence Academy of Art in Italy, and in 2003 was an artist in residence at the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation in Westport, Maine, for six weeks.
Akhriev has also taken small groups of painting students to Tuscany, and is a guest instructor in the painting program at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
Akhriev immigrated to Chat-tanooga in 1991 upon receiving his master’s degree, with honors, from Repin Institute under the tutelage of the late Poitr Fomin. His reason for coming to the U.S. inspires a smile on those who hear the story: When Russia was still a part of the Soviet Union, Akhriev met an American artist named Melissa Hefferlin at Repin. At the time, she was only the second individual from the West to have studied at the school. A romance developed between the two artists, and today, they’re married and have one son. Akhriev and his family divide their time between the U.S. and their new home in Spain. Now a U.S. citizen, Akhriev says he has no complaints about the months he spends in Chattanooga.
“In this country, I have been able to make the career I love. And the support in Chattanooga is great. The major part of what I make is here.” Akhriev can’t remember a time when he wasn’t drawing or painting. One day, when his father dropped him off at art school, his teacher asked how long he’d been painting. Akhriev’s father said the Russian word for “always.” From the hours Akhriev spent at the school learning art history, drawing, painting, and composition, to his time of advanced study in St. Petersburg, to the contributions he’s made to the artistic landscape of Chattanooga, Akhriev has ex-pressed the ideas that shape his view of the world. His perspective is relentlessly optimistic, and not only enhances the spaces around the art he creates, but also opens windows to thought in those who view his work. In the process, Akhriev reshapes their perceptions. He’s talking with his hands, and people are listening.
“When I’m at my easel, I’m at perfect peace. It calms me down. What I see on the news sometimes upsets me, but what can I do? I can stay who I am, no matter what. The noise doesn’t mean a thing. It’s just a distraction.”
To view Akhriev’s art, visit his Web site at www.daudakhriev.com.