Interview with Bozhidar Dinkov

Your background in molecular biology brings a refined sense of observation into your practice. How has this shaped the way you approach light, detail, and composition in your painting?

My background in molecular biology has mainly taught me patience and attention to subtle details. I’m used to observing things that aren’t immediately visible, and that naturally carries over into the way I paint.

When working with light, I often think of it as something that reveals structure — not just illuminating a subject, but showing how forms are built. Detail, for me, isn’t an end in itself, but a way to guide the viewer’s eye and create a sense of closeness to the subject.

Composition also comes from this habit of organizing and looking for relationships — how elements interact and what kind of tension or balance they create together. I’m not aiming for complexity for its own sake, but rather clarity and honesty in the image.

In the end, science has taught me how to look closely, and painting gives me the freedom to interpret what I see.

Your work often explores the quiet presence of forms found in everyday life and beyond. What continues to draw you to these subjects, and how do you decide what becomes part of your visual language?

I keep coming back to these subjects because they hold my attention over time — they don’t reveal everything at once. There’s often something quiet or easily overlooked about them, and that makes me want to stay with them a bit longer and really look.

What becomes part of my visual language isn’t something I decide in a fixed way. It develops gradually, through repetition and through noticing what I’m naturally drawn to. Certain forms, rhythms, or ways of using light start to reappear, and I follow that rather than forcing it. At the same time, I try to stay open. If something starts to feel too familiar or no longer alive, I let it go. So it’s an ongoing process — a balance between returning to what resonates and allowing the work to shift over time.

Your work reflects a subtle balance between control and unpredictability. How do you recognize the moment when a painting has reached its natural completion?

For me, that moment is more intuitive than planned. I usually reach a point where the painting stops asking for something — nothing feels unresolved, but it’s also not overworked. There’s a kind of quiet balance where the elements hold together on their own.

Because I tend to move between control and letting things happen, I try to pay attention to when further intervention would start to flatten that tension. If I keep working past that point, the painting can lose its energy.

So I often step away, come back with fresh eyes, and see if anything still pulls at me. If it doesn’t — if the painting feels stable but still alive — that’s usually when I know it’s finished.

Looking back on your path from science to art, what would you describe as the most defining moment that confirmed this direction as your own?

There wasn’t a single dramatic turning point, but rather a gradual shift that became impossible to ignore. I realized that I was consistently more engaged when I was painting — not just in terms of enjoyment, but in the way I was thinking, observing, and making decisions.

At some point, it stopped feeling like something I did alongside everything else, and started to feel like the place where things made the most sense to me. That clarity came from a repeated, quiet recognition.

So the defining moment, if I had to name one, was when I accepted that this wasn’t temporary — that painting wasn’t just an interest, but a way of working and understanding the world that I wanted to commit to.

Your paintings carry a distinct sense of calm, clarity, and intimacy. What kind of emotional response or atmosphere do you hope to invite in the viewer?

I think that sense of calm and intimacy comes from the way I spend time with the subject, and I hope that carries over to the viewer.

I’m not trying to lead them toward a specific emotion, but rather to create a space that feels quiet and open — something that allows for a slower kind of looking, where attention can settle without being pushed.

There’s often a subtle tension in the work, but also a sense of stillness, and I’m interested in how those two can exist together. If there’s a response I hope for, it’s a feeling of closeness — not necessarily to the subject itself, but to the act of looking.

Ideally, the experience isn’t overwhelming or overly defined, but something more understated — a quiet presence that invites attention and lingers for a while after.

In your view, can realism be understood as a way of revealing truth — or does it also open space for interpretation and presence of the artist?

For me, realism isn’t about fixing a single, objective truth. It can reveal something real, but that “truth” is always filtered through perception — through what I choose to look at, how I frame it, and how I translate it into paint.

So in that sense, realism definitely leaves space for interpretation. It’s not just about accuracy, but about attention — what is emphasized, what is left out, and how the image is constructed. Those decisions inevitably carry the presence of the artist.

I’m interested in that balance — where the work feels grounded and recognizable, but still open enough to hold ambiguity. Not everything needs to be fully explained. Sometimes realism can bring you closer to something, while still leaving room for uncertainty and personal reading.