Artist’s Description

There is something almost peaceful about this room. A young woman sits quietly in a black rocking chair, while a black cat watches from a red armchair beside her. Around them are familiar signs of home: a piano, a single pink rose, a tropical plant, floral wallpaper and an old patterned carpet. Muted greens and dark wood create a nostalgic, dreamlike atmosphere, interrupted by deliberate flashes of red.

Yet the stillness is not entirely peaceful.

This painting was inspired by my experience of living in Kyiv during Russian missile attacks. When a ballistic threat is announced, there may be very little time between the warning and the sound of an explosion. Sometimes there is nothing left to do except wait.

So I sit quietly.

And the cat sits beside me — as if, if we stay very quiet, perhaps the missile will not notice us.

It is an irrational, almost childlike thought. But when danger is completely beyond our control, the mind searches for small rituals that can create an illusion of safety.

This is the psychological space I wanted to capture.

There is no explosion, smoke or destruction in the painting. Instead, there is a room holding its breath. The woman is calm. The cat does not run. The flower remains in its vase. The red shoes are still on her feet. Ordinary life continues, but it has become intensely fragile.

War is present precisely because it is absent from the image.

The rocking chair becomes a place of waiting. The cat becomes a silent companion and witness. The room becomes a temporary shelter. And silence becomes an act of survival.

For me, this painting is ultimately not about missiles. It is about the human instinct to protect ordinary life when the world outside becomes unpredictable — and about the quiet intimacy between two living beings simply sitting together and waiting for danger to pass.

Sometimes survival looks nothing like heroism.

Sometimes it is simply sitting very quietly beside someone you love.

Dutch acrylic paints Amsterdam™ and Italian canvas by Unico were used. The artwork is finished with satin varnish, with painted edges matching the background. Created on a pre-stretched canvas on a wooden frame. Signed and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. Carefully packed for safe delivery.

Collector’s Insight

When We Stay Very Quiet is Bagatskaya’s masterwork on this platform, and one of the most compositionally and psychologically sophisticated paintings available here. The concept is expressed with total precision: the absence of war is how war is present. There is no smoke, no rubble, no alarm — only a room arranged with the hyperreal clarity of someone noticing every ordinary thing at the moment it might be the last time.

The painting is built from details that accumulate meaning with each viewing. The small framed image on the wall — barely readable, but depicting a grey industrial or urban skyline — is the only direct hint at what lies outside. The floral wallpaper, the monstera, the single pink rose on the piano, the intricate carpet: all the soft domestic textures of a life that has learned to continue. And then the red: the armchair where the cat sits, the platform shoes still on the young woman’s feet, small urgent notes against all that muted green and dark wood. The red does not announce danger — it is simply the colour of being alive, of caring about how you dress on an ordinary day that has become extraordinary.

The cat is rendered with the same care as in Bagatskaya’s other works — golden-eyed, watchful, occupying its chair with complete composure. The young woman has turned slightly toward the viewer, her expression neither distressed nor at ease, but somewhere in the particular quiet of waiting. The rocking chair has been stilled.

Bagatskaya writes that staying quiet is an irrational, almost childlike response to danger. What the painting understands — and what makes it endure — is that it is also a deeply human one. The instinct to hold still, to keep the flower in its vase, to sit beside the cat: these are not denials of reality but small affirmations of it. The painting holds that paradox with complete steadiness, and without a single false note.

This is a work for serious collectors. It will mean something in ten years that it already means now, and more in twenty.

Materials & Presentation

• Original acrylic painting on canvas
• Amsterdam™ Dutch acrylic paints on Unico™ Italian canvas
• Artwork size: 25.6 × 45.3 inches (65 × 115 cm)
• Style: Eclecticism / Year: 2026
• Finished with satin varnish; edges painted in background colour
• Pre-stretched canvas on a wooden frame
• Signed by the artist
• Certificate of authenticity included
• Carefully packed for safe delivery