It feels like everything around me is shouting.

When people are shouting, it's very hard to gather your thoughts and write anything coherent. I try not to comment on the political agenda — I've explained why many times.

This channel is no exception: it's where I collect my own private world of interesting things. Apparently I'll also be writing something about myself here from time to time, if the censorship reaches social media.

On 13 February my daughter Maya was born. I don't have more time now — rather considerably less. Coming up: finishing off a couple of interesting thoughts about Ilya Repin. Over the past week I've absorbed a lot of historical material, including memoirs and Chukovsky's book.

Also: we're quietly greasing the skis and warming up the tractor. If anyone has work offers that involve relocation (I'm a concept artist and art lead, Katya is an art director and print manager), we'd be glad to talk. Our original direction was Canada or Australia, but in current conditions the choice is more about "from where" than "to where."

A small story about creative torment.

Repin was incredibly self-critical. Like any "amateur," he kept the little lamp of his own greatness burning very deep inside (and worldwide recognition came to him fast — he wasn't yet thirty when he painted Barge Haulers). He praised other people's talents extravagantly and was completely dissatisfied with his own canvases. On top of that, being a workaholic, he spared himself nothing and worked in binges without rest.

It's worth understanding that Repin was a narrative painter: in his work, meaning always dominates form. It matters less how something is painted than what. Pose matters more than rendering. You can read it even in his portraits — dishevelled, drink-ruined but magnificent Mussorgsky (painted in hospital, days before his death); sickly, hypochondriac Pisemsky with his damp trembling hands; the enamoured, unattainable squint of Elizaveta Zvantseva, and so on.

But that doesn't mean Repin didn't want the how. Like any enthusiast, he too thought about doing a fashionable little whoosh and stepping away from realism — just making something pretty, dab-dab, with a bit of pretension. Yo, symbolism, Vrubel.

He tried several times. The result was choice garbage; they're considered Repin's worst canvases.