I never thought paining with children would be so important to me. When you get involved with the creative process of a child you open new gateways. Children are so sincere and spontaneous. My experience shows that a child would never lie when it is trying to arrange the colors and the shapes. Great artists are a mixture of adults and children, the painter contends.

“This is something that comes from a child's heart. No matter what you suggest for drawing, the child always does it its own way. Bulgarian children will always paint the sun bigger than the houses, or draw the rooster bigger than the children themselves. In other words, children live in their own world. I have been in jury at hundreds of contests for child drawings and I assure you will never find a drawing depicting violence, catastrophes and cataclysms. Bulgarian children like to draw sunny streets and a peaceful world. When you look at these drawings, you realize that children do not want to live our life and that they somehow suffer from our own problems. They want to live their own way, different from the order set by adults. That is why I like to say: if politicians and all adults in general look at children’s drawings, they would realize what their lives should be.”

In Mr. Yahnadjiev's view, it is very important to encourage children and inspire them with self-confidence. For example when you draw together a wall panel:

“When you make art with a child you can never say: well, that's all that child is capable of, as I often hear some of my colleagues say. You must help this child see the colors and encourage it to like music. This goal is very important to me. There is a very good sign on the school door which reads: Help me, so I can offer up a prayer for you.”

In fact the stylish interior of the school, where Ivan Yahnadjiev currently works, is full with child drawings and exquisite panels made by the older students together with the artist himself such as: a walnut tree, wind mill made of 30 kilograms sliced bread, a three-meter high colorful hedgehog made of 5,000 pens etc. People who see these works of art are stunned by their bright color typical of the art of the renowned painter Yahnadjiev. His painting can be seen in many Bulgarian homes and galleries, in many European countries and on other continents, too.

“The moment a given picture starts to live its own life is very good. A picture becomes a picture when it leaves the parlor and finds its new owner, i.e. it is either sold, or presented as a gift. It travels along unknown roads. Sometimes you can find it in a house, where you have never expected to find your own work of art, or someone can meet you in a foreign town and tell you he owns your drawing. These moments are quite joyful.”

Painter Yahnadjiev makes various artistic events in Italy together with his son who lives there.

“I would say that my son is mainly behind these events, because he works as an artist and a parliamentary journalist in Rome. That is why he is able to communicate with various organizations, which helps us do strange things sometimes. Last time we drew on crashed cars together with the President of the Italian House of Deputies Laura Boldrini. It was interesting, because we demonstrated how children must be protected on the road. We did that in Rome city center, only several meters away from the National Assembly. We did similar things in Bulgaria, too. I will never forget what he did for a very old street in the town of Assisi in Italy. He placed over 250 painted umbrellas on special cords. It was summer and when the sun was rising, the colors reflected on the pavement underneath. We also made a body art session and many other strange things there”, concludes Ivan Yahnadjiev.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov

Photos: private library of the painter, Atans Dzhidrov, Veneta Nikolova