I have had a passion for wood since childhood. I have always made things out of wood, for myself. My love for wood led me to intarsia and marquetry. Without love, marquetry is not an easy craft.

I was once in Moscow and visited my friends who are carpenters. They had many kinds of woods that they used in their works. The trees were from Africa: Wenge and Cassandra. These trees haunted me. The marks on those boards attracted me right away and I began to craft the natural marks on those trees into small animal figures.

I create a scene using the stains and marks already present on a piece of wood. It excites me to notice the lines and grain in pieces of wood that are 30-35 years old. Once I have decided on a theme for the stain, I choose wood in the colours I need. For example, Apache wood is light yellow. I then assemble the design with glue and compression.

I take inspiration from where I live and what I see in daily life on the coast of the Caspian Sea and in the Absheron peninsula. In my series The Misérables, I show people I have actually seen around, and in my series about salt collectors I portray what happened in World War II when the Nazis had seized most of the salt lakes in Absheron.