Downshifting is an act of moving from a lifestyle of greater consumption towards a lifestyle based on voluntary simplicity. As a rule, individuals choose to minimize the 'more-is-better' pursuit of wealth and consumption. Giving up their careers, some people go to sunbathe on Goa beaches. Others abandon everything for the sake of art. Yuriy Nagulko used to be a successful businessman. Now he is working day and night on the sacral paintings.

Gallery: You have a nice country house and seem to want for nothing. Along with this, you are an Orthodox believer. Are you a sybarite or ascetic in your ordinary life?

Yuriy Nagulko: I am ascetic. When necessary I keep the fast. I am comfortably off since I had been working for the whole of my life. Not long ago, I left the business though it was not an easy decision to take. I used to hold the executive post for about 30 years. I took the final decision after my trip to Jerusalem. I cannot explain what I felt at the Holy Sepulcher and while being baptized in the Jordan River. As you get there, you understand that all the nations of the world are the one big family; you feel power – it is God-given strength.

Gallery: Have you always been such an active Christian or some life principals have determined such a way of thinking?

Yuriy Nagulko: I stood on the brink of a precipice looking death in the face at some moments. The whole life passes before your eyes in such moments. I was born again; I started to paint differently even being unaware of it. It is such a shock! If what you see at that moment will not sober you, nothing will do it later then.

Gallery: Intellectual cynicism is the craze now. People with such traits become famous quickly; sometime they call it charisma.

Yuriy Nagulko: Charisma is something different, to my mind. It should be found in man’s deeds. Is it charisma to spring out not remembering whom you come from? Cynicism does not ennoble a man whatsoever– that is the same if to pour plants with acid.  Everything is outmoding rather quickly.

Gallery: What is your view on what they commonly call “the modern art”? For example, the past “dog-personae” benefit of O. Kulik, which is still talked about…

Yuriy Nagulko: Unfortunately, I know of what you speak. I am traveling a lot around the world and I have seen much. It is not difficult to do what he did. My father was director of the secondary school, later he was head of the insane asylum – I have seen much of different people. For this reason, I am trying not to follow such people in my ordinary life and to be like them. I do not want to be either monkey or dog. It is a lapse into savagery. I am sure one cannot expect much of the people of disgraceful behaviour.

Gallery: As far as I know, you did not go to specialized art school. Did you get different skills on your own?

Yuriy Nagulko: I had great teachers – El Greco, Rembrandt. I am lucky to travel around the world and see the masterpieces in the largest museums. I learned a lot by myself, I had to work much for that. It is good to get an art diploma, but there is one point here – the teachers should be good.

Gallery: You make for the old masters. Which art trend would you associate your works with?

Yuriy Nagulko: I would not do it with any. I like Picasso as well as Rene Magritte. These personalities did not talk of themselves - they created. By the way, they did not aim at crushing others. Let us take the impressionists, postimpressionists and classics. The Soviet Union used to have good things also.

Gallery: Do you have a liking for the Soviet values?

Yuriy Nagulko: I cannot be in sympathy with the Soviet system - it ruined my family from both sides. I am from the rich noble family. Mother’s family traces their descent from Dukes of Nesvitsky who belonged to Rurik (Roderick) dynasty. Why should I love the Soviet?   

Gallery: They say that the moderns who often paint Jesus are provoking some straightforwardness that, no matter how strange it may be, may interfere with the deep spiritual emotions of the audience.

Yuriy Nagulko: The Seventh Ecumenical Council answered it with the immensity of aniconism. An icon is something that resembles. If you have a plenty of your mother pictures, does it interfere with your life?

Gallery: I am speaking of the fine arts, not of the icon painting.

Yuriy Nagulko: Just go to exhibitions and see if there are many paintings on the religious subjects. When you stay in front of a painting, it does not actually matter what is depicted there, the essential is what you feel. Maya Plisetskaya said if you wished to know which painting was the best at the exhibition, you should bring a barbarian and he would show you the one. This is true because a barbarian thinks with emotions and sensations; an ordinary man has… you know how he thinks. Show him a bad painting of a famous artist and he will praise it in order to make a credible showing; but one should be frank. It is quite travail for me to depict the Lord or the Virgin. I am not fasting forty days as icon-painters do because I do not paint icons. I depict everything that accompanies an everyday life. The people say that they feel well when they put up my “Fresco” in their houses. I am sinking with fatigue when I paint on the religious subjects. Now I work day and night without a break. I use that technology which should not let the paints get cold. These are quite different things - to create spiritually and to paint with colours.

Gallery: Who do you think managed to paint spiritually?

Yuriy Nagulko: Michelangelo did. Many of the mannerists, for example Parmigianino and Fiorentino, were close to that. I saw a great thing in Florentine – The Deposition from the Cross of Jacopo Pontormo; it is a magnificent piece, indeed.  Pontormo was able to get closer to the ethereal world. Late Titian created rather dramatic paintings, e.g. his Pieta (now kept in Gallerie dell’Accademia). I think many paintings are not for the flats. Believe it or not, one should not put up Vrubel works in the flats, because something bad might happen. There are paintings that you look at and feel better.

Gallery: Where do the images come to you from?

Yuriy Nagulko: They do from subconscious. One needs some experience and knowledge to have this happened. A painter should be literate and intellectual. I paint with my soul but not canonically. Children who do not pray Canonice do it better than grown-ups who do it by the book. I test myself whether my works agrees with the facts. It happened once that I painted a landscape and a man recognized the Lake of Gethsemane in it.

Gallery: I know that you support the young artists.

Yuriy Nagulko: We do as much as we can. I say we, because I do it with my wife.

Gallery: Do you plan to exhibit your works abroad?

Yuriy Nagulko: I do. Now there are some serious projects. If we can put it that way – we make “an American bridge”. It is not only for me. Notwithstanding everything, I am quite comfortable in Ukraine, wherever I was, wherever I go. I love Volhynia where I come from. I feel good in my country. People smile at me not to observe etiquette but just because they want to do it.

Anna Rymarenko