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It is a great mystery — a birth of an Artist. Many have tried to draw back the curtain of the unknown, understand this mystery over the years. This phenomenon, however, continues to be one of the most enigmatic. Every artist is peculiar and different from those who came before. But what unites all artists, is creation that is life worth. Once is an artist bereaved of their right to create - they die.

A pictorial brush is a prolongation of a Pavel’s hand. It is an instrument moving on the surface of a canvas together with the heart beat and pulsating nerve of the author. Pavel lives in a constant creative process, without a minute interruption. Painting, being artist’s favorite type of art, nourishes his creative thought and ideas. Ever since Pavel was little, he has always dreamt of becoming an artist. And could it be another choice? “A choice to be a professional artist. Throughout ages such choice has been based on a tradition: a profession would be handed down from father to son. A child got used to a smell of turpentine and glue from the childhood; learning process found itself in a family, and a first workshop was at home”^[1].

Pavel was born on January, 5 1963 to an artistically gifted family. His father, Boris Alexandrovich Tychinin was an artist and teacher who had raised many talented people at a Novosibirsk Pedagogical college № 2. Pavel’s mother Ljudmila Tychinina-Arshinova taught art drawing at high school. The elder brother of Pavel, Boris Tychinin, is an artist too. Aura of creativity, family discussions about art, painting, and literature have considerably formed the personality of our hero. His father had a large book collection on pictorial art and classics of the world literature. That is why very early begins Pavel to read and attentively study all books from a home collection. Simultaneously, he started drawing and painting in oil, learning from his father and the elder brother. Sketching members of the family and friends, everyday life and landscapes, persistently mastering aquarelle and oil painting technique have to a large extent contributed to the artist’s evolution.

Being a 13-year old, Pavel started to run a large preparative work for a painting “Prometheus” (1979–1981). He studied an ancient-Greek myth, planned design and made sketches from nature, long and torturously battling with colors. He continued mastering painting in the effort to find required color solutions. Main task set before him was to transmit romanticism and reality of the ancient story into a painted image. Characters of his family members and a classmate, who posed for Pavel, found their reflection in the painting. Immerse them in that mysterious mythical, and so real to Pavel world, was an important and necessary goal. To make a correct composition, the artist strove for building in space mutual connection of specially modeled plasticine figures, as well as thought over the lightning.

At last, it was revealed — his first large painting. The scene on the canvas is in mysterious semidarkness, range of colors is predominantly gold and brown. A tall figure of Prometheus flies at us holding fire in his hand. Lower are depicted those for whom the fire was procured. The artist shows their emotions. A young artist, interpretation of an everlasting myth and a great theme of sacrifice. This first painting was shown at Pavel’s personal exhibition in a college, where he started his education at a Graphic Department. The first and the most complicated stage was successfully passed. But there are new discoveries, painful search and thinking ahead.

In 1982 Pavel works on a Diploma devoted to landscapes of the Republic of Altai. This was preceded by trips to Teletskoye Lake, to Chemal village, to Belakurikha, to the Sayan Mountains and Krasnoyarski krai. Numerous nature studies executed in oil colors in the most beautiful places of Altai underlay for a triptych “Altai”. Pavel took advice of a Novosibirsk artist G. Leontief. According to him, these meetings “were conductive to understanding difference between work on a nature study and a landscape painting”.

Nature casts a spell over him and inspires to create new works. In Altai arises tendency to transferring of a landscape’s polychromy and harmony. Especially interesting are a painting technique mastering, a steady and strong stroke, and texture of things, rocks, water and trees. The artist starts using a palette knife that allows applying paint densely and thickly. Landscape becomes one of the main components in his work. Pavel repeatedly adverts to Altai motives, creating numerous interpretations that reflect his striving to generalize the observed scene. Immersing into the world of nature pacifies and invigorates, contributing at the same time to incipience of new plots. Yearly trips to Novosibirsk allowed compliment cyclus of Siberian and Altai landscapes. A large series of landscapes with the Academy of forestry engineering and its park was created in Saint Petersburg. Of special attraction for the artist is picturing of ponds. At every season and in different weather he reproduces on a canvas the peculiarity of scale of colors, diversity of color and daylight. An aura of poetic sentiment shows through in these works, and Russian nature is an object of his affections.

After a 1989 trip to Kizhi and Valaam, charmed by the beauty of those places, Pavel created from memory a landscape “Kizhi”. Within a few years, the artist accomplished many full-scale pictorial studies of rivers Oredezh and Vuoksa. However, he enjoys painting Petersburg as well. Landscapes depicting historic places of the city were purchased for a private collection in the USA. And the landscape from nature “Anitshkov Bridge” (1989) is in a private collection in Germany.

Significant in Pavel’s creative work is portrait genre. Relatives and he himself were his first models. In course of time a range of the portrayed began to widen — friends, colleagues. Pavel paints constantly self-portraits, as if obeying the Socratic philosophical testament — “know thyself”. Years pass by, and there is a different artist looking at us from a canvas. In a “Self-portrait. 1978-1979” he is a teenage with an intent look of widely open eyes. Dynamical and nervous brushwork adds even more of emotionality to a young character. In a “Self-portrait. 1982” before us is a self-absorbed young man, fired from a spectator, at the moment of a challenge — ahead are hard years of army service. Here is the same character as in a self-portrait of 1978, but over ten years passed and the year 1987 came. What a sorrow and sadness this face expresses, the look had become severer. Painting technique changed as well — the stroke is more confident, flat and smooth. In a “Self-portrait. 1992” he portrays himself sitting against the carved chair’s back. The composition is set so, as if the artist himself sat for a portrait. Pavel studies his changing appearance closely and transfers it onto a canvas, finding new composition solutions, changing format and using a different coloration. Main aim is to get across his mood to a spectator.

Since 1986 Pavel has lived and worked in Leningrad—Petersburg. In 1986 he painted first portrait of his wife — Helen Tychinina (Shapilova) and of her father — Evgeny Shapilov. Simultaneously Pavel worked on a large portrait of Igor Glushakov (1987). A singer and composer depicted in a general form because he is a participant of the Afghan war. Igor is presented singing his songs, accompanied by a guitar in his hands; his figure is a little smaller than its actual size. “In this portrait I wanted to create a contemporary character”, — tells Pavel. In a portrait of Marina Filippova her face is a center of composition. This work was selected by a commission of the Union of Artists and shown in 1986 at the Central Exhibition hall of Leningrad during a fall exhibition “Our Contemporary”. That fact testified professional recognition. Exactly in that year Pavel jointly with Boris Tychinin, a ceramist Andrei Chelyshev animator Natalya Baskakova took part in preparation for an exhibition “Young Artists” that was organized at a House of Officers in Leningrad. And in 1987 works of these creators were shown again in a club “Vodokanal”.

In 1988 during his stay in Novosibirsk Pavel executed his mother’s, Ludmila Pavlovna Tychinina, portrait. Two portraits of a railway engineer Evgeniy Dmitrievich Shapilov (Pavel’s father-in-law), on which Pavel worked from 1989 till 1995, was exposed in 1997 at his personal exhibition at a Central museum of railway transport (St. Petersburg). A portrait of Pavel’s son Alexey (1988) is worth noting. This work was the first experience of work in a multi-layered painting technique. A painting’s small size and a child’s figure that is compositionally approximated to a spectator and clearly highlighted at the dark background create a touching childish character.

Pavel permanently pays a lot of attention to a portrait genre. In 1992 a custom portrait of E. Orlova was painted. And on request of a Leningrad Railway Institute's department Pavel painted a portrait of a Russian scientist, power engineer Henrich Graftio. In the same years portraits of N. Baskakova, the son Alexei (1995) and E.D. Shapilov (1995). Two large portraits of N. Kaltashova (1999, tempera) and E. Dorrer (2000, oil). The both paintings are close in their composition that was originally found by the artist in a portrait of E. Dushkyna (1988). A “Family portrait in the interior” (1999) has a complex compositional and spatial solution. The painting is of large format and complex background, on which figures of the wife, son and artist himself are clearly marked out. The task of creating a portrait work was bound to executing a peculiar painted side-scene — a copy of an age-old painting’s fragment. Te artist creates a particular portrait type — a painting of the sitting family members combined with painted figures, depicted in the 17th century.

In youth Pavel was strongly influenced by regular trips from Novosibirsk to Moscow and Leningrad. Visits to the first-rate museums — the State Russian Museum, the State Tretiakov gallery, the State museum of fine arts named after A.S. Pushkin, the State Hermitage — have become a natural necessity and gave possibility to gain knowledge of Russian and world’s chefs-d'oeuvre.

It was not enough for Pavel to only visually examine a masterpiece, but he needed to get systematic training of copying, comprehending the technique of a well-known master, study the way how the canvas is painted. In this sense a significant role belongs to a restorer, working with old paintings, conserving, strengthening and clearing canvases from dirtying. Aim of restoration is to return authentic colors to a painting. Since 1990 Pavel has worked as a restorer at the Central Railway Transport museum, subordinate (?) to the Ministry of Means of Communications of the Russian Federation.

V. Logdachev — a former restorer at a research institute of a museum of Academy of Arts — helped Pavel master a restoration process. While restoring a portrait “Minister of communications S.V. Rukhlov” (beg. 20th cen.), Pavel got advised and gained practical skills learning from his curator, Logdachev. Together with a restorer V. Chekhvskaya, Pavel restored portraits of the 19–12th centuries (kept in the funds of a museum). 25 of these portraits were restored by Pavel single-handedly. In 1995 in Moscow an exhibition to 130 years of the Ministry of Means of Communications^[2] was organized. Among other works, portraits of railway ministers and commissars (1865-1995) were shown — all restored by Pavel Tychinin. There is a constant display in the museum where Pavel works. And the artist painted for the display portraits of A. Chechott, В.И. Лопушинского, Е.Е. Нольтейна, Ю.В. Ломоносова.