Boris Vasilievich Chesnokov is a man of many talents. He writes poetry and music, and paints. In his art, he celebrates his native region, its unique nature and its people.

Portraits are one of his favorite genres. He has painted portraits of the Honoured Artist Gennady Zavolokin, the mountaineer Yury Uteshev, and Vladimir Borisovich Smirnov, who designed the Miners’ memorial in Mezhdurechensk.

In his works, Boris Chesnokov demonstrates the ability that sets great portrait painters apart from other artists — he depicts on the canvas not only the physical appearance, but also the wide range of different emotions and subtleties of feeling, concerns and moods of his subjects.

The artist Boris Chesnokov spent more than 10 years working in the Tomsk and Usinsk mines in Mezhdurechensk. Coal mining is one of the most important themes in his art. In his works he portrayed geologists, mining surveyors and timbermen, and miners working in underground shafts or in open cast mines on the surface.

Almost every family in the Kuzbass region is involved in the coal industry in one way or another, but only a few people get the opportunity to see how the “black gold” is extracted from under the earth.

His canvases depict the working day in the mine, with the miners toiling away at the coal face, and give a vivid impression of what it means to be a miner and what it takes for the miners to achieve their production records.

In his painting Mining Surveyors at a New Coal Face, he depicts the preparatory work that is done deep underground before minerals can be extracted. Three specialists are measuring an underground area in the coal deposit so that they can then tell the work brigade where to fix the supports, where to set the charges and where to drill.

Mine surveyors work in what is one of the oldest human activities. This profession came to Russia thanks to the efforts of Peter the Great. Mine surveyors are specialists who search for mineral deposits and sites for future mines. They survey and conduct geometric analyses of underground strata, and on the basis of these studies they prepare detailed plans and maps for further development or the construction of underground facilities.

Mine surveying is a very dangerous job. There is a great danger of being trapped underground following a cave-in — and if they provide inaccurate information they can also put at risk the lives of a whole team of miners.

Boris Chesnokov’s painting allows us to imagine the conditions that the ‘coal men’ have to deal with in their work.