Photo-based painting of Nicholas Chistiakov is clearly about eternity. Pictorial motifs basically unimportant themselves. Just the people and places, such that there is a million - women, men, nudes, portraits of family, friends, landscapes, isolated areas of construction, sea and clouds. Mundane, but at the same time interesting with its uniqueness and personal history. Painting is very rich in texture and color. Painterly layers overlapping each other to create numerous complicated effects. The artist often uses a slightly blurred effect, emphasizing the moment of passage of time in his works. The works often opposing naturalism and lacking clear contours. This art often represent a highly abstracted interpretation of images based on which it is created. The artist creates a parallel world frozen forever in the moment. Already painted pictorial surface is squeezed in a certain direction with a brush or palette knife, creating a vertical or horizontal blurry effect. Color schemes of photorealist paintings by Chistiakov are restrained and often monochromatic, the artist only occasionally allows accents of primary color.
:"I choose my subjects from the thousands of photographic materials, i often use collage to combine several photographs into one. I take photographs myself, i find them on the internet, in newspapers archives and magazines. I seek to depict accident or experience. I like to paint museums. I made a lot of paintings based on the interiors of Metropolitan Museum of art, i think it is a perfect combination of a historical and momentary - classical building with the historical pieces of art - and the momentary - figures of watchers, audience, which strictly belongs to our time. I like the effect which makes combination of contemporary costumes, fashion with the historical places and historical art. I like to reinterpret classical art on the backgrounds of my own works. I often change composition of well known pieces of art, which you see on the backgrounds to achieve more interesting effect in my works. I try to make art which looks eternal, which does not depict anything what is important just today and something what is just daily routine of contemporary man. My art is something what is beyond today, something what is today, yesterday and tomorrow as well."