Zbieracz Chrustu (The Brushwood Gatherer) was inspired by something Vahan saw in the Armenian mountains in 2004.

As the bus groaned and heaved its way up the mountain, Vahan saw a silver Jaguar - a symbol of obscene wealth and status in Armenia - coming in the other direction. Then Vahan's eye fell upon a figure at the roadside. It was a 'humble person' who was slowly, patiently collecting brushwood from the ground and adding it to the bundle on their shoulder. As the glistening Jaguar passed the brushwood gatherer, Vahan had an epiphany:

All of us are like that brushwoodwood gatherer. On a world scale, we’re all like ants, and whatever we do in life, whether we’re filthy rich businessmen, farmers, presidents or artists – whatever – we’re all just trying to add sticks to our little bundles. There’s nothing that technology can do to change that. We all want to be warm and have food in our bellies. So we go out everyday and gather sticks. This is ‘pierwotność’ (the primal).

After returning to his accustomed penury in Poland, Vahan wanted to send out a simple message to the world from his 'hovel', in the form of a pastel: primitve living conditions do not just co-exist alongside hyper-developed technocapitalist society, in the margins and peripheries; in fact on a fundamenatal level we all seem to be condemned to feathering our nests and obeying the dictates of survival mechanisms. Brushwood gathering is the inescapable primary setting. All social climbing is, at best, superficial and, at worst, doomed. All your wordly possessions can disappear in an instant if the earth quakes beneath your block of flats. In which case you will pick up the pieces, gather sticks.

The figure in The Brushwood Gatherer us not bowed down or bent double beneath his load: there is an undeniable dignity in his gait. It could be a scene from thousands of years ago, were it not for the telegraph poles which echo his angular posture. The blue sky, the pastel-induced heat haze and the mountainous terrain suggest Armenia, but the location is as vague as some of the pastel outlines. This is a primal 'Everyman'.

[The message must have arrived at its destination, as The Brushwood Gatherer 100cm x 70cm was awarded the Grand Prix by a panel of international judges in the Biennale Pasteli 2004 Competition.]

A Time For Drunken Horses

In the autumn of 2005, Vahan saw Zamani barayé masti asbha (A Time For Drunken Horses) 2000 and said:

If I'd seen this film before I did The Brushwood Gatherer, in all likelihood The Brushwood Gatherer would never have come into existence.

A Time for Drunken Horses is an elemental yet everyday drama of humans battling with a landscape, just to get by. The implacable, unforgiving landscape and severe weather play a leading roles in the film: it is the terrain that can partly be blamed for keeping these Kurds in such primal conditions. There is simply no other way of getting the huge loads over the mountains other than on a human or mule's back. The extraordinary adversity these people pitch themselves against day after day takes on immense proportions when seen from a child's perspective.

The film would have made Vahan's Zbieracz Chrustu redundant - had he seen it - because it had already said everything that needed to be said. Landscapes have immense significance in Vahan's conception: he will often compare the Armenian people to stone, and this is not just a metaphor: the Armenian people are so resilient and durable because their character has been shaped in a wrestling match with their mountainous terrain. In this way, over thousands of years, a people can internalise their landscape. This is clearly what has happened with the Iranian Kurds in A Time For Drunken Horses: they are involved in primordial relationship with the land and elements - hardcore pierwotność.