Matevosyan, 82, came to the Aral -- an inland sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan -- in 1962 and has since depicted it in hundreds of paintings.
In those days, the Aral was the world's fourth-largest inland body of water -- after the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia, Lake Superior in North America and Lake Victoria in Africa.
The sea started to dry up in the 1960s as a result of human activity, including the drawing of huge amounts of water for the irrigation of cotton to feed the massive industrial production of the then Soviet Union, of which Uzbekistan was a part. Today, the Aral's volume of water has fallen by 90 percent -- to 115 billion cubic metres -- and its surface area has shrunk by 73 percent -- to 17.6 thousand sq km.
The sea has fragmented into two giant lakes, called the South Aral and the North Aral. Millions of hectares of what used to be the Aral Sea bed has now turned into a new desert called Aralkum.
Winds blow about 75 million tonnes of dust, sand and salt from the desert into the atmosphere every year, all of which settles on land within a 1,000 km radius.
''Paintings by Matevosyan are a chronicle of the Aral tragedy,'' Uzbek poet and journalist Raim Farhadi told Asia Water Wire. In his first pictures, the artist depicted the deep waters of the Aral and fisheries, and in later ones he showed abandoned ships lying on dry land that was once covered by water.
Two years after Matevosyan came to the Aral, he noticed the sea was shrinking. One of his paintings was of a fish factory in the town of Moynaq in western Uzbekistan -- once a centre of industrial fishing and canning.
The factory stood on poles in the sea. Later he found, these poles sticking into dry ground; the factory deserted.
Matevosyan was born in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, but his parents subsequently moved to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.
He lived there for around 30 years and depicted the Caspian. He also depicted the Black Sea, an inland sea between south-eastern Europe and Asia Minor that is connected to the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara and to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.
Moreover, he was trained at a children's flotilla and graduated from College of Art in Baku.
Matevosyan, says Farhadi, is a chronicler of the tragedy of man and the environment, feeling the "bodies" of land and water.
''As the sea dries, it is leaving behind a new desert that produces dust, sand and salt storms,'' the painter said in an interview, explaining why he has followed the fate of the Aral Sea. ''The land around the Aral is covered with salt and toxic chemicals, which are blown into the atmosphere and spread to the surrounding area.''
Plants and animals are vanishing, he says, and fish is now shipped from the Baltic Sea, thousands of kilometres away.
''The people living there are suffering from a lack of fresh water and, as a result, they are suffering from diseases,'' he adds.
The population around the Aral shows high rates of cancer and lung diseases, as well as other diseases.
Not very optimistic about the Aral's future, Matevosyan says: ''The Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers (feeding the Aral) go through the territories of six Central Asian nations (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and every nation tries to draw as much water from them as it wants. If everyone takes a bucket of water from a barrel, there will not be water in it.''
Until the 1960s, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya poured about 58 billion cubic metres of water into the Aral every year.
However, water flowing into the Aral declined drastically after the mid-eighties after the expansion of irrigation. The sea also loses 30 to 35 billion more cubic metres of water through evaporation every year.
The scientifically grounded and ecologically allowable water consumption in the Aral Sea basin must not exceed 80 cubic km a year, but the present use of water -- around 102 billion cubic metres a year -- is already higher than the permissible level.
''All these numerous funds and organisations (that want to provide aid in the Aral disaster) are not much help,'' Matevosyan continues. ''They receive a lot of money from the West and use it. At the same time, this state of affairs also may be advantageous to representatives of the West who want to be present here.''
The artist believes that his paintings help raise money for people living around the Aral.
His works have been shown at art exhibitions in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Germany, Turkey, the United States and former Yugoslavia. He also has written a book about his work titled 'Man and the Sea'.
These days, Matevosyan is a skinny senior citizen whose beret is almost permanently atop his head. Currently married to a woman 23 years his junior, he has three daughters and one son from two marriages and four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Apart from Caspian, Black and Aral Seas, he has depicted in his work such themes as fisherfolk, doctors, police officers and images of beautiful women.
Paintings by Matevosyan reflect the states of the day, surroundings and the colours in them depend on light. The painter prefers realism -- the depiction of fact or reality, rather than imaginary subjects -- in his works because this manner is ''more long-lived''.
(* This story was produced for the Asia Water Wire, a series of features on water and development in the region coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific.)IPS
