I was eleven years old at that time. I could never stop drawing and even tried to paint with watercolors. One day, on payday, Dad brought me oil paints and pig hair paint brushes. I cannot even begin to explain how happy my father’s gift made me. I woke up several times at night, unscrewed the caps from the tubes and experienced great pleasure from breathing in the smell of oil paints. (I still do this sometimes, for some reason it seems to me that the current paints do not smell as good as those ‘first’ ones.) The next day I tried to paint something with dad’s gift, but suffered a bitter failure. I diluted the paints with sunflower oil, and they left greasy spots on the paper. I even cried out of frustration and resentment. Fortunately, a distant relative whose cousins were artists came to my aid. She advised to first coat the paper with a sealant solution, let it dry and only then start painting. So I did. My results began to improve. I copied from postcards, from drawings I found in anthologies, from pictures in magazines. Both at home and at school I was called ‘Our Artist’. I really liked that nickname.