Ukrainian artist who escaped to Canada named 2023 Artist in Residence by Boating BC

The artist, whose husband and son are Russian, left Moscow in 2021 and moved to Canada because they were planning a future for their young son "and it wasn't in Russia"

Kyiv is an odd place to come from, and Calgary a strange place to move to for an artist who is drawn to painting seascapes and coastal scenes.

But this is the path watercolourist Inna Nagaytseva followed from Ukraine to Canada.

“I like the sea, boats and whales and this is what I like to paint,” she says.

The Ukrainian artist has been invited to paint at the Vancouver International Boat Show Feb. 1-5 at B.C. Place and Granville Island. She has also been named Artist in Residence for 2023 by the Boating BC Association.

It’s a first for the boat show to both bring in an artist and support an artist in residence, said Boating BC executive director Bruce Hayne.

“We felt when we saw her artwork, it was so appropriate for our market and our members,” he said, adding that she’s recognized at exhibitions worldwide.

Nagaytseva will paint at a booth during the five-day show and have some artwork and postcards to sell, as well as accept commissions.

Hayne said Boating BC wants to be able to continue to support her in her career and help her raise funds to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.

Nagaytseva’s journey from Kyiv to full-time artist had an unlikely start in a car repair shop, where she worked as a mechanic and later in the parts department, a “profession my mother chose for me.” She found the work boring and painted as a hobby.

In 2017, she settled on watercolours after experimenting with acrylics and oils, and took some online courses and practised a lot.

“When I tried watercolours, it was very hard, then I started to learn the material and it was very interesting for me because you can use a lot of different applications, different textures and different experiments,” she said from her Calgary home.

“And my son was young and I had to paint during the day and I had to learn to paint quickly.”

Through practice and self-training, she eventually started selling paintings, and her mother’s skepticism about the viability of a career as an artist changed. Before the war she was selling to private collections around the world, including Canada, the U.S., Iceland, Germany, South Korea, Poland, France, Spain and Britain.

She’s been invited to display her art recently, including shows in Japan, South Korea, France, Spain and Poland.

While living in Moscow for eight years, she met her Russian husband, Gregory and they have a four-year-old son, Damian. The couple knew they wanted to leave Russia even before the expanded invasion of Ukraine last year.

“It’s a very hard country for living because they still have a lot of Communism and people don’t make much money and they can’t buy houses or cars and they don’t have a lot of money and the education is terrible,” she said.

“It’s a dictatorship. It’s a big country and it has a lot of great places and people, but unfortunately, the government is very horrible and makes a lot of bad things for people,” she said.

In November 2021, a few months before Russia escalated its war against Ukraine, the family moved to Poland because “we were thinking about the future for our son and it’s not in Russia,” she said. “We chose Canada.”

From there, they got their Canadian visas and moved in May to landlocked Calgary, where she continues her nautical themes, sometimes drawing from photographs her friends send her of maritime scenes.

Nagaytseva’s mother, grandmother and uncle and his family still live in Kyiv, parts of which have been bombed by Russia, and she’s in daily contact with them.

“I’m very worried about them every day, hearing the news, because it is very terrible,” she said.

Proceeds from Nagaytseva’s art sales, including sales at the boat show, will be used to support her and her family, her Kyiv relatives and her soldier friends fighting for Ukraine.

slazaruk@postmedia.com

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