canvas, acrylic, 60x80 cm

About the painting

"Around the World in a Hot Air Balloon" is not so much a route as it is an image. It combines naive courage with a quiet philosophy of flight. The hot air balloon does not force its way through space — it trusts it. Unlike an airplane, it does not conquer the air; it becomes part of it.
From above, the balloon reveals a different picture of the planet. There are no borders, no lines on the map, no familiar hierarchy of the significant and the insignificant. There is only the fluid landscape — oceans, deserts, cities dissolved into space. The world ceases to be a collection of destinations and becomes a continuous field.
This journey also transforms our relationship with time. There is no rush, no sense of a race. Time stretches, filling itself with air and light. A person finds themselves outside the rhythm of everyday life and begins to hear a deeper rhythm — the rhythm of the planet itself.
And yet, "around the world" is not only about the Earth. It is a circle that a person traces around their own perception. They return to the same place from which they started, but with a different gaze. The world is the same — but the horizon within has expanded.
This is the philosophy of aerostation: not to conquer space, but to dissolve into it; not to accelerate the journey, but to experience it. And then flight ceases to be a means of arriving and becomes a way of being — light, open, free.
Traveling around the world in a balloon is a "slow reading" of the planet, where you do not gulp down continents, but savor them like lines of a poem.
Such a flight teaches the most important lesson: happiness does not lie in reaching the destination quickly. It lies in staying on the path long enough to have time to be astonished. And the best way to circle the world is not to fly over it, but to drift above it, hearing below the roosters crowing, the dogs barking, and the children laughing as they wave at you, taking you for a miracle.