Mario Grigorov

Mario Grigorov is a Bulgarian born artist, film composer and pianist. His background reveals him as a musical prodigy; who at the age of five became the youngest student ever admitted to the Sofia Conservatory. He would go on to study music in four different countries before age of eighteen, becoming an accomplished concert pianist and improviser in the styles of jazz and classical.
Mario Grigorov’s two-handed drawings skirt the boundary between dream like and familiar form, vertical worlds branching outwards as they descend the page in fluid near-symmetry.
In each two-handed drawing, left hand mirrors right as Grigorov draws with both hands, lines dodging and swirling across the page unbroken. His craft stems from his unusual ambidexterity. From a very early age, he has been able to write backwards with his left hand effortlessly. The harmonic motif at the heart of two hands drawing simultaneously isn’t accidental; the Bulgarian-born Grigorov is also a concert pianist and film composer.
“The key to these drawings is actually the asymmetry,” Grigorov stresses. “The imperfection, I believe, produces an organic, emotional connection. Perfect symmetry bores the eye. When building the Acropolis, the ancient Greeks purposefully avoided exact symmetry, skewing their columns just so, spacing them apart at slightly uneven intervals, and the result is breathtaking.”
Most recognize Mario Grigorov from his film career; his acclaimed scores for award- winning films such as Precious and Paperboy ornament a long career in music. It’s no surprise, then, that Grigorov has also extended the mechanics of Two-Handed Drawings to piano. His Mirror Tones compositions are a series of etudes in which both hands mirror each other exactly across the keys. “Mirror Tones are a wonderful pursuit,” he explains, “but there are only so many harmonies you can play in that configuration. With Two-Handed Drawings, I have infinitely more freedom.”
When approaching a fresh page, Grigorov seeks out the elusive part of his mind. “As a student, I had to memorize music and I used the subconscious part of my brain, where I think most music is stored. I let that same part of my mind take charge and keep the analytic part of the brain as far away as possible.” Grigorov’s Two-Handed Drawings are the reverse-engineered spirit of a Rorschach pattern guided by a single psyche. 
Mario lives and works in London with his wife and two children.