San Base
Biography
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San Base was born in 1956 in Russia of the former USSR.
As a little boy, San displayed remarkable skills in arts and science.
At the age of 12, on his own initiative San began studies at an Fine Arts School.
All the same time, he indulged in his other passion – mathematics.
After completing the high school programme, San had a difficult choice before him.
If he continues his studies in Arts, he’d be a subject to military conscription.
To avoid the conscription he joined a post-secondary institution with a profile in applied science,
specifically Cybernetics. “If I commit myself to Arts, then I won’t be able to dabble in Cybernetics.
With Cybernetics as a major, I will be able to draw in my spare time,” justified San his decision.
In five years, San graduated with a degree in Cybernetics, and was invited to continue his education
in a Doctorate studies programme. A marriage and family had put an end to San’s academic career.
San moved to the capital of Ukraine, Kiev. Now he was working as a computer systems developer by day,
and was painting by night. He never showed his works to anyone.
The satisfaction from the process alone was a sufficient reward. “I am doing it for myself,
not for the fame or money,” was his précis.
Meanwhile, the economy in the former USSR continued to sputter, and basic goods were in short supply. Store shelves were bare. One day San walked into his favourite art supplies store and could not buy a blank canvas. The need to transfer an image onto a canvas without a delay drove San to take one of his finished paintings and paint over it. With time, there were more and more images in San’s head that required a permanent medium. Meanwhile, the arts supply store remained void of canvas with a little hope for the situation to change any time soon.
San struggled to pick out a victim among his own works. Which one of his creations was to disappear into oblivion? It was an agonizing process. Cannibalizing his feat to create new pieces. Eventually, San lost affinity for the finished works. One single canvas was all that San needed now. Finished works did not last for too long.
Once San was interrupted while painting and had to leave. Upon return, he looked at his unfinished work and, to his astonishment, San discovered that the combined expressiveness of the two paintings, old and new, had exceeded either on its own. The transition between the two paintings had injected the element of flight into the work. The moment was nothing less than a personal epiphany. The unassuming manifestation of self, so incomplete with so much of unrealized potential, so misguided and buried under the layers of banal existence, was right there in front of him. The painting attained another dimension, the dimension of time. “Nothing stands still in real life,” concluded San. “Therefore, in order to be real, a painting must change with time.” He also concluded that paints and a single canvas is far from being an ideal platform for the newly discovered notion.
San put his brushes aside and turned his attention to science. By 1995 San Base formulated the defining principles of Dynamic Painting – a painting changing with time. Once the theoretical fundamentals were completed, it was time to put them into practice. The implementation required sophisticated technology, which could not be possibly found in the post Soviet Union Ukraine, fighting for its economical and political survival.
In 1996 San Base immigrated to Canada. While working as a system developer, San Base continued to apply his theories into practice. It took another 8 years of dedication and perseverance before the first working Dynamic Painting system became a reality.
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