Questions. Emotional questions of one man to another, existential questions of a man to the God are constant in art. But each of us, and especially an artist, puts them in his own way and gives his own answers. Questions and answers of Yerbolat Tolepbay appear in his new canvases in unison with the rhythm and tone in which he hears and feels this world. They fill his paintings with deep-seated emotions, hidden expectation, irrepressible conflict; with discrepancy between what is desired and what is searched, between ideal and present, real; with attempts to comprehend, to explain; and with futility of these attempts.

Harmony achieved in his paintings with the help of colours, lines and space astonishes because of its paradoxicality. Or, rather, disposition for paradoxicality. Visual perception of the precious beauty of this world in his paintings is always primary, but his world view is fundamentally philosophical. The resulting ideas of his canvases are complex because the psychology of a modern artist is complex. Every world is isolated. World of another man is a different world. No entry. One can only watch, only see how a dream dies, only compassionate the futility of hopes.

Contact of different human worlds is fugitive, even momentary. Rapid, as a spark, recognition or denial of another – another world, world of another. Unity appears, just for a moment, and immediately goes away. Proximity of kindred spirits seems more lasting, a woman and a child, a woman and grand-children, sisters. But it’s just as tragically short. The resulting idea is that conversation with another person as with oneself, unity of souls is impossible. It brings the worst – it brings disappointment. World of another person is far away. It is attractive but unreachable. Other worlds, worlds of other people, are cosmically far. Close, but at the same hopelessly, infinitely far. They are aloof.

Attitude to colour has also changed. Now, painter puts paints to the canvas in a sharper, even coarser way. One colour overlaps with another, as if the colour were also trying to explain itself, its essence. But it remains uncomprehended, it doesn’t mix, doesn’t converge with another one. Colour becomes more contrast; touch, or rather stroke of a brush, is sharp, dynamic, and harsh.

Intensity of clean colour, attracting openness of colour combinations, compositional upwardness. Lots of sky, the eye happily perceives its clear blueness, sense of flight emerges. Flight is the key element of Tolepbay’s canvases. Motif of swing, jump rope, dance, riders hopping off over the ground, soaring melody of saxophone and accordion, all these are a flight. Flight of a soul towards the sky, to the other, separation from the ground, taking off – freeing from gravitation for an artist often means comprehension of the sense of being.

Take-off, desire to fly away is interpreted in his paintings almost as a return to oneself. It is the flight, movement to the sky that, according to him, contains answer to the enigma of life. But on the ground, where the law of gravitation applies, aspirations of souls are doomed. Man cannot become God, but he can be a man with the God in his soul, with the sky in his soul.

Other changes in Tolepbay’s art are also perceived. Always attracted to the accomplishments of the European culture, now he is drawn to it with significant art piety in his soul. While previously in his internal attitude towards the world, in his internal dialogue with the European masters, confidence in rightness of a young prairie voice had more weight, now other intentions are heard in it.

Reminiscences of European cultural heritage, French art are multiplied in a whirl of his new works. They reflect his intensive, solemn, ornate colour of stained glass windows of European cathedrals and middle-age book miniatures, colour of Madonna’s dress and cloak. Art of the brothers Limbourg, Millet, Matisse, Modigliani and Miro has fascinated the artist, making formal search in his art sharper.

But voice of nomad, even modified, still sounds in Yerbolat Tolepbay’s canvases. It sounds with a different tune reflecting another experience of his soul, other feelings towards the earth, sky and people. He comprehends and embodies their eternal images in the mysterious paintings of other worlds, frozen in their eternal beauty, that leave and return, fly up or freeze in search of oneself. But again, as an arbiter, he takes the issues of human life to cosmic scale, where human life is a moment, while mountains, steppe and sky are eternal.