The Vision

LittlePiecesOfArt is built on the belief that small things can carry great weight, and that a single image, made with enough intention, can say what a page of words cannot.

The Premise 

You know how in every school class there is one child who is best at something. One is best at maths. Another sings best. A third draws. I was the child who drew best. 

I had the following strategy:

I would try to sit at the back desks, at the very back of the room. I would arrange my notebook and the relevant textbook just so, and begin: with my ears I listened to the lessons and with my hands I wrote them down, while with my eyes and hands I also drew. I drew mostly in the empty margins at the top and bottom of my notebooks. Well, sometimes, when circumstances required it, I would spread further, across the lines themselves in the middle of the notebook.

My audience was my deskmate, and sometimes those in front of and behind me. You could say they were my first art critics. (haha)

Boredom is an extraordinarily useful state for developing imagination and fantasy. Because in class you cannot talk to other children, cannot fidget left and right, cannot stop paying attention, I would fall into a state of boredom. And drawing was my ticket to a world of variety. Yes, I sat in class, seemingly attentive, writing things down, but in my mind I would launch myself into infinite creative worlds, where the only limit was my own imagination. As a result: I was never bored during class. Quite the opposite. I travelled between worlds and "saw" all manner of things. For example, here is this colossal monster, who clearly dominates his own world. I can see I sacrificed part of the lesson - but clearly creativity was more important to me than the topic of Realism. (haha)

In drawing I always found refuge in my own ideal, creative world. That is understandable and expected. I also found in it the opportunity, on the blank page of infinity, to make my ideas visible.

The years passed and when the time came to apply to university, I had no vision for myself - what I would study, what I would become. I knew I understood nothing of mathematics and the exact sciences, while the humanities came more easily to me. Not because I had studied them with any particular interest, but simply because I retained things while listening to a history or literature lesson and drawing or writing at the same time.

Under outside influence (T.Y., thank you!) I applied for a place in Law. I was accepted. And at university I studied in the same way. Drawings were always present in my lectures too. I became a lawyer! I appeared in court hearings, conducted cases, had clients, and so on. And I kept drawing! While waiting in court for my case to be called, while waiting for a client meeting, while queuing at some government office for a document to be issued.. I kept drawing! It always pulled me in that direction. And I never listened to that impulse of my heart. I ignored it, pushed it into a corner of my mind, because I have to be a serious person! With a serious profession! Drawing... that is something else. Something on the side. Throughout all those years of practising law, I always had the feeling that what I was doing was not quite what I wanted to be doing. Something was not quite right. The drive was missing! The passionate dedication was missing! I did not burn with passion for my profession. I knew there had to be something else, but I did not know what it was.

The Revelation. Finally.

And so, until the winter of 2019. It was two in the morning, February. I was not sleeping. I was nervous about an upcoming case and was preparing for a court hearing, rewriting my notes. And again, while writing - from time to time - an escape into drawing. A quick dash into the richness of the creative world, to return two minutes later and continue with the case notes. In one sublime moment, while drawing another of my miniatures, in a moment of insight, of stillness within myself - whether it was the late hour, when everyone else was asleep - I heard myself... I saw myself... while drawing. I felt how, while drawing, the energy flowing through my left hand was of a different intensity, strength, quality. Something different was happening! It was not like when I write - it poured out... it literally flowed. And then I understood! I realised it! This was my calling! My calling is to create! I stood up, looked upward, raised my hands, and said aloud through tears: "Was this, Lord, what I had been waiting for my whole life?!" And then I made the decision. I was leaving law and devoting myself to drawing. I had not a moment of hesitation. The feeling I received was so unambiguous. I could no longer imagine anything else.

I have cried from joy twice in my life. The first time was when ... The second was when I "re-drew" in that one moment. I say re-drew because the feeling was as if I were drawing for the first time in this way.

From that moment on, a fundamental change in my life and a transformation of my personality followed. I was deciding to leave the legal profession and abandon law in the name of rediscovered creativity. From the outside it looked extremely unserious, frankly mad, against a backdrop of how many hungry artists with diplomas there are. Nothing mattered! I felt it in my heart! And I did not feel that about law. And that is everything.

The Cards. Like art.

I always had a particular relationship with greeting cards. I gave special time and attention to choosing the most appropriate one for the person I was giving it to. Sometimes, when I could not find the right card, or when the occasion was especially important, I would draw a special card for the person. Go out, buy paint, draw, give it. And so on.

I always looked at greeting cards as works of art. My maternal grandfather died a little before or after I was born. He was something like a border guard. But from my mother I know that around holidays, he used to draw cards and give them as gifts to relatives and friends. And here I am - born with an inexplicable draw toward greeting cards! Something pulls me toward them in a particular way. With a particular energy. And I always make them. So... I abandon law, I decide I will draw. Twenty-five years of suppressed feelings were pouring out in waves onto the white pages! As if for the first time I was peering into my own soul, to see what was happening there and to begin to pull things out, to clear them away. I was pouring enormous quantities of suppressed emotion onto paper. But! In the end the bills at the end of the month still had to be paid. The lawyer's fees were no longer on the table. I draw - and then what, how do I capitalise on my creativity? Of course, cards! I had not a moment of hesitation. I knew it! I had always known it! And the brand appeared of its own accord. What will it be called? I wrote Little Pieces of Art on the page. On the very first attempt. I had not even thought about it. It had always been there. And my grandfather, whom I never knew, is dancing the dance of joy in the beyond. Presumably. And so LittlePiecesOfArt was born - a brand of greeting cards that possess artistic value, a measure of wisdom, and whose mission is to elevate the card from the level of a product to the level of a work of art.

The Style. No rubber.

I always strived to say the maximum with the minimum. Not for any other reason than that, perhaps, at school, I did not have unlimited time - the teacher could spot me at any moment, seeing that instead of dutifully copying down the lessons, I was drawing in my notebook. On top of that, I did not have unlimited space either. I was not drawing in an A4 sketchbook, but in the notebook for physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, literature, and so on. Space was limited. Top or bottom, sometimes in the middle - and the most special place was on the back of the notebook. The last page. There I could finally spread out! (haha)

Since we wrote down lessons with a ballpoint pen, I drew with one too. Directly in ink. I never had the option of drawing in pencil and erasing with a rubber. Drawing in ink gave me a great deal. Because it cannot be erased, I always had to refine my drawing as I went and pay attention to how the work was coming out, since a mistake cannot be erased. There is no rubber for ink. And so my style formed as accurate, precise, minimalist, miniature - and slightly mad, imaginative, creative, fantastical.

This style fits the concept of the greeting card perfectly. Everything about it speaks of cards! I often joke that I draw visual haiku, because the Japanese haiku is exactly that: to say the great with the little. Nothing missing, but nothing excessive either. As Da Vinci himself once said: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Saint-Exupéry. The Ruler.

I was eight years old when my father died. This is one of those events that shatters the whole ordered universe of a child, splitting it in two - and one half stops living, left dead in the form of debris and memories, which somehow have to be managed and dealt with.

I have a memory in which it is evening, I am in bed, and my mother is beside me reading The Little Prince to me. I do not know why, I do not know how, I do not know for what reason - but that book, that image, the words, the messages, lodged themselves deep in my soul and heart and mind. Perhaps the particular pictures. Perhaps the particular messages, which as a child I understood in that traumatic moment in a particular way.  I do not know - but some connection with The Little Prince, with Saint-Exupéry, happened there, then.

When I re-drew in 2019, a very particular encounter took place. For some reason I sought out Saint-Exupéry's work - I was already creating, reading non-legal literature, reading philosophy, wisdom had always drawn me too, one way or another - and I come across Saint-Exupéry and see a book I am seeing for the first time, extraordinarily obscure, called Citadelle or The Wisdom of the Sands. And I begin to read. And can you guess what? I was consumed. I was merging with the messages. I was living them. They were me, I was them. Saint-Exupéry and I spoke the same language. Everything in that book harmonised with me perfectly. As if it were from me, for me. I cannot explain that either. For a year or two I went to sleep and woke up with that book, I carried it everywhere with me. I read it at every possible opportunity. This is how my creativity was enriched enormously by Saint-Exupéry too - which is why on every card there is a thought of his, which I have somehow connected to my own work.

The Mission. The Good.

Cards remain a bastion of humanity. In a time when everything is being digitalised, increasingly generated through AI, a paper card - not digital, but paper - is a material expression of value, of a pure form of humanity, of the best intention, of a synthesis of good feelings, of good wishes. The card, because of its small size, compels us to bring out and express the best of ourselves in a wish - not to spread across two pages, but in a few words, in two sentences, to say everything we think, to gather it, to compress it - just as under such compression precious stones are born: under pressure, in a small space, at high temperature. The creative act of the card is the same thing: little space, a great thought, pressure.

The goal of LittlePiecesOfArt is to turn the giving of a card into an artistic ritual. This is not just a card. This is a small work of art that carries a great idea, to change the person, to direct them toward what is Good. To show them the path toward the Good. That is the purpose of art. To direct a person toward the Good.

That is LittlePiecesOfArt.