What was the deciding factor to become an artist?

"I did not decide it. I just always wanted to be an artist. The decision was not to do other things. The idea of commitment replaces idea of keeping the options open. That, for some reason, did not come easily."

How were you trained as an artist?

"At first in a little evening art school in Vilnius, Lithuania. There I had a teacher who, in-spite of being a complete failure at verbal communication because of being drunk all the time, still managed to be very effective. He taught me to stay away from easy answers. I continued with four years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where I studied with Sidney Goodman and Bruce Samuelson"

What present medium/s do you use to create your artwork/ what is your technique?

"I am a painter. Oil on boards or canvas. Also I have recently experimented with prints in collaboration with a great printer, Erika Greenberg Schneider."

Is there any specific meaning or conceptual reasons you work in the medium you use?

"I don't think there are. It doesn't matter. James Castle used soot and spit and produced beautiful dravings. One just has to find something that works with the right speed and intensity for one's own needs. If a medium is too fast for you, then you loose control over it, and everything falls apart. Watercolor is far too fast for most people, so there were only half a dozen artists who ever did it well. If the medium is too slow and deliberate for you, then you loose interest: your thoughts are always ahead of your hands. What could be free pursuit, full of excitement and danger, becomes instead a diligent execution of pre-meditated projects. Ideally one uses a medium that works as close to the speed of one's thoughts as possible. Oil painting does it for me. And that is fortunate, since it also happens to be the most universal and powerful medium."

Alex Kanevsky, 'Twins'

What contemporary event do you feel most inspires your work?

"My own life, sometimes. My own observations of lives of other people."

Is your work in any way driven by political events?

"Not at all. I don't even understand why political events are supposed to drive and inspire artists. Why politics? Why not religion or psychoanalysis or space exploration for example? What is so interesting about political events? Politicians aspire to serve their own interests or these of large groups of people who elect them. In either case, art being a deeply personal enterprise, has nothing to do with these things."

What kind of emotions /feelings/ questions do you want a viewer to leave your work with?

"Naturally - my own emotions /feelings/ questions."

How do you feel you break from other representational artwork?

"See above. The need to break from other representational artwork never occurred to me. I just do my stuff. If I do it honestly and with commitment, inspired by my own circumstances and vision or the world - how can it help but to be decidedly my own?"

What figure and or artist do you feel you are most inspired by?

"There were many at different times, depending on what I was trying to accomplish. Van Gogh, Cezanne, Mondrian, Kline, Rothko, Freud, Bacon, Auerbach, Uglow, Diebenkorn, Bishoff, Terry Winters, Brice Marden, Nan Goldin, Gerhardt Richter -to name a few beyond the obvious classics.
At this point, I think I might be done being inspired by other artists. I feel more as an island, in the sense that I am just there, doing my thing. I still admire many, but not in the acquisitive way. I am just glad that Antonio Lopez Garcia exists, or that Rembrandt or Morandi existed. I am very excited by my recent discovery of Jacopo Bassano at the Met. "

How do you develop or come up with the ideas that drive your work?

"I have a vague idea of what a painting I am about to attempt might feel like, its emotional climate. I try to find the right images, the right way to paint it, so that there is nothing extraneous, that it is directly to the point. The direct route appears to be the most difficult to find. I have a good visual memory from which I borrow freely the images or portions of them: color, light, circumstances, etc. that fit the emotional climate that I am trying to produce with purely visual means. I don't worry too much if it all makes conventional narrative sense in this new context. I am not telling stories, nor am I just looking and painting what I see. I suppose, if painting is a form of language, I attempt to create a language, foreign to all but myself, and then say a few things in that language in such a way that would make it clear to anybody who listens, even if the language remains foreign to them."

Do you have any specific directions that you either are planning to take or are going to take with your artwork?

"Only vague notions. I think of painting as a form of dialog. I enter with some general ideas, but the outcome is far from preconceived since it all largely depends on what kind of resistance the painting offers. I always had trouble with work in the form of projects: specific plans and goals that are subsequently accomplished. That just does not interest me very much. So an answer to your question about my plans would be meaningless for me. In general, I intend to continue doing what I already do because I find that difficult enough and the intensity of the results does not completely satisfy me."