The revival of Christianity in post-Soviet Ukraine has more than just a spiritual aspect – it's also breathing life back into an ancient trade.
As new churches spring up around the country, and old ones that were ruined during the decades of Soviet rule are restored, local artists are finding there is a growing demand for religious artwork, especially icons.
Such is the demand, that souvenir-making company Veselka has even opened a school of icon painting in Kyiv. And churches are not the only buyers of religious art.
'Life has forced us to open a course in icon painting,' said Veselka director Yury Morozov. 'Today [tourists] are interested not only in matryoshkas [Russian dolls], but in more serious products, such as icons.'
Veselka was set up in 1990 and originally specialized in producing souvenirs for foreign tourists.
In the first few years after independence tourists were plentiful – at least compared to Soviet times – as Ukrainian diaspora and people just curious to catch a last glimpse of life behind the Iron Curtain came to visit Ukraine. Veselka did good business.
But tourist interest in Ukraine has waned, in part because the Soviet way of life is slowly fading away, but also, ironically, because one area in which Ukraine has stuck solidly to Soviet tradition is in its rigorous regulation of foreign visitors. Official Ukraine, with its visa and police registration requirements, presents an unfriendly face to tourists.
With falling revenues from foreign visitors, Veselka's management realized the company needed to find a new market. It chose teaching the art of icon painting.
Veselka invited a well-known Ukrainian artist, Yury Nikitin, to pass on his 17 years of skills and knowledge of icon painting to students at its new school.
Nikitin, who has painted icons for churches since 1983, presently has five students in his class, who pay $30 per month to study under him. After four months, they are deemed ready to start creating sacred religious images as a profession.
Although icon painting is an art steeped in religious tradition, students also have more down-to-earth reasons for learning the skill.
'I think the knowledge of icon painting will also help me make more money,' said Svitlana, one of Nikitin's students, who makes matryoshkas and other wooden handicraft and sells them on Andriyivsky Uzviz.
'I took a course in painting on wood a year ago, and now I want to master this kind of art that's new to me,' said Svitlana, who declined to provide her last name.
But Veselka has drawn the disapproval of some clergy for teaching the art of icon painting for commercial gain, as well as its overturning of past traditions.
For example, women can also take Nikitin's course and learn what had been exclusively male occupation in Ukrainian churches and monasteries before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution forced religion underground, where it stayed until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
'Not every artist can create icons for the church. This work is governed by special canons,' says father Theodore, a priest at the Kyivo-Pecherska Lavra, a big monastery complex in downtown Kyiv.
'First of all the person should be a Christian. He is required to know theology and know how to reproduce the image of a given saint correctly.'
According to the icon painting canons, the painter is also required to receive a blessing before starting his work and fast while he is painting the icon, Theodore said.
'For some important icons the paint also must be mixed with holy water rather than ordinary water,' he added.
But Nikitin, himself a believer, says he knows the required canons and strictly abides by them while painting icons, and he also tells his students to follow them.
'The clergy require that the artist pray and fast at least during the time he paints,' Nikitin said. 'But the icon painter also must be a believer in his heart.'
Nikitin himself embraced Christianity after becoming interested in icon painting while attending at the Kyiv Institute of Arts in the early 1980s. Despite incurring the wrath of the institute's administration for his beliefs, Nikitin gained his degree and soon after painted his first icon for a small church just outside Kyiv.
His father, a retired police colonel, was summoned by the Soviet authorities to explain his son's behavior.
'My father's former police boss ordered him into his office and said, 'How can it be that you – a retired colonel of the Soviet police – have a son that is painting icons for churches?'' Nikitin said.
'But it didn't result in any punishment, because I'd graduated from the institute by then,' he added, with a smile.
Nikitin had to study icon painting largely on his own, using the few books available, since the art itself was forbidden at the time.
But the priests he came to know – and for whose churches he still paints – familiarized him with the spiritual side of icon painting.
Most of Nikitin's clients are small churches in villages outside Kyiv, and these will be the future customers of his student, he believes.
Unlike in the cities, where icon painters are appointed by a special council composed of municipal government architects and priests from a particular church, in villages priests a free to decide for themselves which icon they need and who should paint it, Nikitin said.
Although the government no longer bans religion, icon painting has yet to become a profitable profession, Nikitin said.
'[Icon painting] is no longer banned, and more materials are available, but I have to produce other paintings to make a living,' Nikitin said.
'Unfortunately, you can't make enough money by painting icons alone. Sometimes you earn just enough to buy paint and the other necessary materials.'
But Morozov, the director of Veselka, is more optimistic about the future of icon painting – its commercial side, that is.
'We get up to six telephone calls every day about our icon painting course,' he said. 'If it continues this way, we might have to think of expanding our school in the future.'
