Another theme which is close to me is the illustration of the sea, water and ships.

Being a little kid and spending holidays with my parents at the seaside I remember the joy I felt when I used to go to the harbor and do some fishing standing on a wharf. And while sitting on a dock, enjoying the play of the sunrays on the waves, watching the harbor admit huge liners, listening to seagulls’ cries, ships’ whistles, the screech of old, rusty tied up cat schooners I would indulge myself in imagining distant voyages and wonderful adventures that fell to the lot of those sea wanderers.

Since then every time I find myself in seaside towns I have an overwhelming desire to visit some local harbor or a yacht-club in order to inhale (sniff) the sea air and reminisce the sensations of my childhood and sweet and naïve dreams of distant voyages. And it doesn’t matter whether you had that distant voyage or not – the sea possesses a wonderful feature to always be a dream, sense of adventure or wanderlust, towards the unchartered and unexplored. It seems to me that these are exactly the feelings the sea evokes in people. So it appears that by turning to the maritime genre my task in the first place is to reflect that very dream, to obduce the audience and the beholders with that salty sea air and make them spark the feelings and emotions that have always thrilled and excited me at the sight of the sea.

It’s impossible to render the wonder when on a gloomy Moscow afternoon you tackle rendering a southern seascape plunging into the atmosphere of hot Mediterranean area and you feel the foul weather outside gradually retreat and stop annoying you and the workshop gets alight with sunshine. Isn’t it impossible to live without a dream and wonders?