Dear graphic artist, Ovchinnikov over the years of his work has hundreds of drawings, lithographs, etchings dedicated to the people and nature of Siberia, has tried his hand at painting, and always his art, in whatever types and genres he works, is filled with a desire to achieve in graphic sheets and paintings imagery, depth of disclosure of the topic.

In his youth, Ivan Ovchinnikov arrived with his parents in the city of Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, and stayed here for many years. Craving for drawing led to study at the correspondence All-Union House of Folk Art named after N.K. Krupskaya (1964−1967), as it was called — People’s University of the Arts. At one time, the national university named after N.K. Krupskaya played a significant role for many who wanted to master the basics of art, but who did not have the opportunity to study in special educational institutions. The system of classes at the university — consultations of prominent painters and graphic artists, a rigorous, highly professional, but friendly analysis of students' work — helped many peripheral artists to gain confidence and find their own creative path.

For four years, Ivan Ovchinnikov persistently and persistently mastered the basics of the artist’s hard work. He considers Pyotr Miturich to be his university teacher. A well-known graphic artist, author of many popular easel works and book illustrations, Miturich has long been a teacher at a people’s university, generously sharing knowledge and experience with his students, giving them good parting words on the hard road to professional art. Years of studies at the People’s University forever determined Ovchinnikov’s life path, he begins to work in graphics, looking for, trying his hand at various techniques: drawing, lithography, etching.

Ovchinnikov stayed in Kansk for many years. Here he began his career, here his best works were created. But all this did not begin immediately. I had to work as the head of the circle, and as an artist on local television. Several years were devoted to complex administrative work — he was the main artist of Kansk. But all these years there has been a stubborn accumulation of material, and craftsmanship has grown and improved.

In 1969, I. A. Ovchinnikov first participated in the regional and immediately in the zonal art exhibition "Socialist Siberia." These were modest drawings in pencil, felt-tip pen, ink, and a cane pen ("The rural teacher", "Walk", "Outskirts", "City in the window"), but the sheets bribed with warmth and sincerity. Since that time, Ivan Andreevich became a participant in almost all regional, all regional, many republican and all-Union exhibitions. Kansk was proud of its master, in the city there were repeatedly held personal exhibitions of I.A. Ovchinnikov, his meetings with the audience.

A huge role in the rapid and serious growth of the artist's professional skill was played by his numerous trips to the Chelyuskinskaya House of Creativity near Moscow. There, in a circle of colleagues, under the leadership of leading country schedules of the country, People's Artist E.M. Sidorkin, corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the RSFSR V.N. Petrov-Kamchatsky, having the opportunity to work in a variety of techniques, especially in printmaking (which was not in Kansk , since printed equipment requires special equipment, and each equipment has its own), Ovchinnikov received a powerful creative charge.

Serious success in graphic art is the result of long hard work, hard searches, constant striving for perfection. The artist has achieved a lot - his sheets are emotional, made with a high cult of understanding of the basic principles of graphics.

The inquiring mind of Ivan Andreevich and the ardent desire to become a professional in the visual arts forced the artist to turn to various graphic techniques. He usually does not set out to solve any series only in lithography or only in etching. He is interested in searching, experimenting. With equal pleasure, the artist works in unique techniques - pencil, colored pencil, ink, charcoal, tempera, ink, pastel, and in printed graphics - etching, lithography.

The artist was truly famous for the works of his series "Kansky Cotton Mill" (1974, lithography, etching). The name of the series sounds a bit dry, and the first associations associated with the name evoke a series of industrial subjects, so often prevailing at exhibitions of the 1960−1970s, when many artists depicted huge workshops, powerful machines, which lost people. Images of reinforced concrete structures filled the exhibition halls throughout the country. The names of the largest factories and construction sites were full of exhibitions, and often the main thing — artistry — was lost behind the image of the factory floors or the verticals of cranes.

But the sheets of I.A. Ovchinnikov, dedicated once to one of the largest cotton plants in Siberia, are not included in this parade of industrial subjects. The artist did not see the machine tools, but first of all people who were alive, beautiful in labor. There are no "heroic labor feats for the good of the fatherland" in his sheets, which was a common technique at exhibitions of those years. Mostly women work at the textile mill, and the sheets of the series are filled with warmth, softness. The author admires the graceful movements of young flexible girls — mediators, winders among flying woven canvases — all this is decorative, beautiful in composition, dynamic, filled with lyrical sound. The author is able to engage the viewer in an exciting rhythm, to show the beauty of the labor process itself. Sheets of this series were widely exhibited at many exhibitions, they are in several museums of the region.

In 1975, Ivan Andreevich Ovchinnikov was accepted into the Union of Artists of the USSR (now Russia) for creating a series of lithographs. He worked a lot, each of his new work is evidence of his outstanding talent, capacity for work, desire to say his word in art. Having done a lot for Kansk, leaving a noticeable mark there, in 2001 the artist moved to the city of Krasnoyarsk.

One of the innermost themes in Ovchinnikov’s work is the life of hunters, fishermen, and for centuries the measured life of small taiga villages. The artist himself knows this world firsthand. From a young age he goes to the taiga, sleeps in the hunting winters, among his old friends there are many taiga. The master creates the sheets devoted to the structure of villages lost in the forests throughout his work. In these works, performed either in drawing or in lithography, the author seeks to capture the deep connection of taiga people with the nature among which they live. A whole series of sheets are represented by genre portraits of hunters: "Hunter V.K.Kukharenko", "Ivan Petrovich-forester" and many other works depict laconic, harsh people living in harmony with themselves, with their world. The author is able to convey the calm dignity, inner nobility of his characters, their community with nature and with each other, those many qualities that residents of megalopolises have already lost.

An important place in the sheets of Ovchinnikov is the image of the objective world. Ivan Andreevich appreciates and knows how to show the charm of simple and such important things for a person as bread, water, simple dishes, fishing and hunting tackle, taiga-tree, which went many kilometers on blind paths, on the banks of Siberian rivers. A thorough man himself, Ivan Andreevich knows the price of simple, good-quality things made by the hands of folk craftsmen. In each sheet, with love, the artist draws unpretentious, but such necessary products of the taiga people: horse harness, baskets, dry bunches of grass suspended on the walls, sledges, hunting skis, axes, guns, boats. These things in the sheets are as significant to the artist as people.
It is no coincidence that Ovchinnikov created several still lifes depicting hunting utensils. Moreover, the author created these still lifes in painting. There was such an experience, quite successful, in his work, when the schedule presented a large exhibition of paintings and pastels. There, his hunting still lifes were shown. The artist admires the simple, comfortable form of old hunting boots and the gold of freshly chopped firewood. All these seemingly far from poetic things are written with such love that you understand — this world is filled with beauty and poetry for the author.

For an artist who has devoted many years to the art of black-and-white graphics, it is no longer difficult to carry out each sheet at a high professional level so as to reveal the main thing, fill the work with deep images, make it tremulous, silvery. His black-and-white engravings and drawings are beautiful in composition, laconic, strict, but at the same time filled with amazing poetry.

The desire to delve deeper into the lives of people closely connected with nature, to show this life not through the eyes of an enthusiastic citizen, but these people themselves, led I. Ovchinnikov to the Tofalars, one of the smallest peoples of Russia (about 500 people), lost in the south of the Irkutsk region. Here is what the Tofalar local historian M.I. Pugachev writes: "I first met I.A. Ovchinnikov in the summer of 1976 in the village of Alygger, when he was attracted by stories about an interesting and still mysterious country — Tofalariya.

This is a completely mountainous country with harsh natural conditions: a harsh continental climate, a complex mountainous terrain, and a variety of mountain plant zones. One of the smallest ethnic groups of the USSR lives here — tofas. Blue snows, ringing rivers, an unspecified taiga and kind gullible people, merged with the unique nature, living according to its laws — such was the first time Ivan Ovchinnikov discovered Tofalaria in 1976. He opened, already having behind him a considerable creative path.

Since that time, Ivan Andreevich spends several months in Tofalaria. Not just an acquaintance, but a deep knowledge of the life of people living since ancient times by primordial crafts — hunting, fishing, reindeer husbandry; long nights on pastures, in the taiga wilderness, a desire to tell about an amazing region and amazing people allowed the artist to find his theme for many years. His series "The Country of Tofalaria" was started in 1976; it has concentrated all the best in the work of I. A. Ovchinnikov.

For artists who have visited Tofalaria, the most attractive is the unique landscape of this mountainous country, about which they say that the four seasons are four different Tofalaria. But for Ivan Ovchinnikov, the magical beauty of this region is not an end in itself. In its sheets, nature sounds in full voice — this is the night sky, deer, taiga, mountain rivers, but this nature is indissoluble with man, and man with her, he lives in harmony with this world ("Conversation by the fire", "Valley of the Golden root "," Tofalark by the fire "," Motherhood "," Upstream of the Uda River "and many, many others). This is the significance and value of the Tofalar series of Ivan Ovchinnikov.

At first, the author performed the sheets of the series in lithography, in etching, but later, as he often happens, the artist turned to the drawing in pencil, in color pencil. The author does not idealize the life of a small nation, he will show many of the difficulties of the difficult life of reindeer herders and hunters, in a number of sheets there is frank sadness, for example, in the drawing "Old corral. Old deer. Old raven". But the sheets are filled with such love for these people, lost in the Siberian hinterland and living according to the laws of humanity, love, mutual assistance, that the world depicted by the artist fascinates and attracts to itself. It is no accident that almost every leaf contains children, old people, young mothers, their happiness and sorrows ("Evening Tofalaria", "First snow in the Sayan Mountains", "However, it will rain", "Where did my deer go?", "Hunter's wife").

The series of lithographs "The Land of Tofalaria" brought the artist well-deserved fame, her sheets were exhibited at the most serious exhibitions, reproduced in albums, magazines, stored in many museums. At the anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the artist, in August 2013, the series "The Country of Tofalaria" was exhibited in its full version; she introduced Ivan Ovchinnikov as a serious master with her distinct personality. The exhibition caused a great resonance. You need to see a book of reviews, where different people: fellow workers — artists, people of different specialties, often far from art, found the most enthusiastic words about Ovchinnikov’s schedule. "It's a pity to leave the hall, I want to look at these amazing works again and again," the audience wrote.

Singing the beauty and wealth of Siberia and its people, Ivan Ovchinnikov made a significant contribution to the development of the art of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. His works are stored in museums of Krasnoyarsk, Kansk, Norilsk, Lesosibirsk, Irkutsk, Nizhneudinsk, the Directorate of the Art Fund of the RSFSR, as well as in foreign collections in the USA, Japan, Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy.