By Sergey Talichkin

Oil on canvas

Courtesy the artist and The Doorway Gallery

IN Ukraine, temperatures can drop to -28°C. Below 20, schools close. Sergey Talichkin knows. He grew up there. Now Wicklow-based, when he and friends headed to Norway last January to experience the Northern Lights, Talichkin ordered the thermals, the multi-layers, the boots.

Two flights, a hired car, a rented cabin by a fjord 40 miles from Tromso and all was happy expectation. “When we arrived it was

-4°, it was snowing and fell to -12° at night. We knew aurora borealis are best seen in Reykjavik, Luosto, Yukon, Murmansk, Alaska and Tromso, the heart of the aurora zone, but nothing’s guaranteed.”

There for a week, six of those days were cloudy. “We drove and drove, the local station played Dolly Parton all week! Daytime is only two hours. Then the dark.” They went whale watching “in a rubber dinghy, took ferries, crossed bridges, travelled through 6km tunnels, complete with roundabouts.

And this is rural Finland”.

The northern lights phenomenon involves the interaction of charged particles from the sun with atoms in the upper atmosphere but the Latin term ‘Aurora’, Roman Goddess of the Dawn, and ‘borealis’, meaning north, beats any scientific definition. The clouds all week meant grey, black skies. Then on their last night, there was no snow, a clear sky, and unfortunately, a full moon.

“But at 10.30pm, Chris was heating up pizzas when Andrew suddenly started shouting, ‘OMG, OMG,’ and there it was. It was as if someone had slashed a knife through the sky. Postcards of Nordlys did not do them justice. For 40 minutes, right above us glorious greens, blues, a purple fringe danced. There was movement in the colour.”

This painting from Talichkin’s new show captures that magical moment. Pizzas and beers were forgotten. The magic was captured on canvas. In Talichkin’s show there are also Irish landscapes, the

Gap of Dunloe, Crone Woods, the West Pier, Dalkey Island, Killiney Hill — “when I’m cremated I’d like my ashes to be scattered on Killiney Hill, 80pc on the bay side, 20pc facing the city” — and other landscapes, mystical, imagined ones. And a pencil portrait of Christine Dwyer Hickey, whose novel The Narrow

Land, shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year, features artists Edward and Jo Hopper. Ukraine, the US, Dublin. Artists, novelist. Only connect.

Yugen II opens on Tuesday at 6pm and runs until November 28. thedoorwaygallery.com