Painter and muralist · New York, New York

Leonid Titulenko

Murals for rooms, paintings for walls, and drawing lessons for children. Trained in Kyiv, lives in New York, New York.

See paintings at batsuk.art Browse the murals

Leonid Titulenko in a black beret, seated in his studio beside a wooden easel and a painting of pink tulips

Mural of a blue sky with clouds, swallows and a vine border

The work

Rooms that open onto somewhere else

A single decorative element can change the mood of a room, and a full wall or ceiling can turn it into somewhere else.

Leonid paints skies with swallows, ruined walls that open onto the horizon, marbled columns, seaside views and children's jungles. He works by hand, mostly in acrylic, in the tradition of the old European mural masters with modern touches added.

Featured

Two featured walls

A swallow sky from the portfolio below, and a library wall that appears in Leonid's interview in the documentary.

Mural of a cloudy sky with swallows in flight — Sky with swallows 1

Painted arched niches with shelves of old books and urns on a stone-faced wall — Painted shelves in shell-topped niches that turn a stone wall into a library.

More of Leonid's work, including his oil paintings, at batsuk.art →

Portfolio

Skies, ruins, columns and the sea

30 pictures of finished walls and ceilings, restored from archived copies of Leonid's former website. Choose a group, then select a picture to enlarge it. Oil paintings are catalogued separately at batsuk.art.

Oil paintings

From the batsuk.art catalogue

Three oil paintings on canvas from the catalogue at batsuk.art, where each work is listed with its size and there is a form to ask about a painting.

Oil painting of a tall tree on a rocky shore above a calm bay with sea stacks — **Happy Gulf**Oil on canvas · 33 × 35 in

Oil painting of a lone pine on a headland at sunset over a gulf with one ship — **Last beams. Loneliness**Oil on canvas · 25 × 39 in

Oil painting of a sunflower, bread, a clay jug, fruit and grapes on an embroidered cloth against blue — **Country Stilllife**Oil on canvas · 42 × 46 in

See the whole catalogue at batsuk.art

Commissions and lessons

Working with Leonid

Murals: Skies, ruins, columns, seaside and landscape scenes painted by hand for homes and offices. Leonid works mostly in acrylic, which dries quickly and suits private homes.
Paintings: Canvases in acrylic, and in oil for small pictures. Browse the catalogue and ask about a painting at batsuk.art.
Lessons: Drawing and painting for children in a studio room in New Jersey, taught the classical way.
Where: A studio in New Jersey. His former website listed murals in NJ, NY, PA, DE, DC, CT and FL.
First step: Describe the room, the wall and the idea you have in mind through batsuk.art.

About

Born in Kyiv, painting in New Jersey

Leonid was born in Kyiv in 1966 into a family of artists and grew up in his parents' studios, mixing paint and cleaning brushes.

He studied at Kyiv's State School of Art and the Kyiv College of Art, and holds a master's degree in monumental art from the Kyiv Art Academy 18:34, along with a second master's in finance. His father's monumental work ran from large sculpture and murals to concrete carving, mosaics and stained glass.

After the Soviet Union broke apart he moved his family to the United States around 1998, looking for a happier place for his son 17:02. In New York he worked as a video editor and visual effects creator for production companies 20:13. In the end he decided fine art was his way of life.

Today he paints in a second-floor studio at a plant nursery and sculpture garden in New Jersey, and teaches children in a room of their own 17:31.

Mural is an absolutely different approach than canvas. Leonid Titulenko, from the documentary

Leonid Titulenko speaking with his hands together in his studio — Leonid in his studio, April 2013.

Bright studio with easels, a plaster bust and still-life paintings — The studio.

Koi pond and wooden pavilion in the sculpture garden around the studio — The garden outside.

Times link to the moment in the documentary where Leonid says it.

Medium: Mostly acrylic. It is easy to paint with and dries quickly. He uses oil for small pictures. 21:03
Source: Nature. He watches birds in flight and uses what he sees when a mural needs a sky. 21:36
Tradition: Old Master mural painting with new elements added, a fusion of the old style and modern art. 22:29
Wall or canvas: He treats them as separate crafts. Many gifted painters, he has noticed, stop when they reach a wall. 23:02
Master: Michelangelo, for the hard work a mural demands before the painting even begins. 24:21
Teaching: Children sometimes show him a simpler route than the classical one he explains. 23:35

The family

The third generation of a family of artists

Leonid's grandparents studied at an art school in Ukraine, one in sculpture and the other in embroidery. His father, Vladimir, became a monumental artist who filled buildings with mosaics and murals, and drew portraits of older villagers for the exhibition People of Our Land.

The full story, with the family's history and brand, is told at titulenko.art.

Read the family story

Old photograph of Vladimir Titulenko's parents — Vladimir's parents

Painting of bulls in party-coloured bandanas by Vladimir Titulenko — Vladimir's allegory

Vladimir and Lydmila Titulenko standing together — Vladimir and Lydmila

The documentary

The Dynasty of Artists Titulenko

Anastasiya Sytnikova made this film as her final project for the BA in Communication, Culture and Media at Coventry University. It meets Vladimir in Ukraine, then Leonid in New Jersey in April 2013.

The first half is in Russian with English subtitles. Leonid's English interview begins about 17 minutes in.

2014 · documentary29 min

Watch on YouTube Behind the film

Leonid Titulenko smiling during his interview in the documentary

Oil paintings at batsuk.art

See Leonid's oil paintings at batsuk.art

The batsuk.art catalogue shows Leonid's oil paintings on canvas, with sizes and a form to ask about a painting. Questions about a mural or a lesson can start there too.

Visit batsuk.art

https://batsuk.art/

Oil painting of a village on a bluff above a wide river under heaped clouds — Near Poltava, oil on canvas, 27 × 39 in. See it at batsuk.art.

Contact

Questions about paintings, murals or lessons go through Eugene B. Batsuk, who presents Leonid's work at batsuk.art.

Name: Eugene B. Batsuk
Email: Eugene@batsuk.co
Phone: 615-498-9667
Web: batsuk.art