Trypillya 2021

Oleh Denysenko’s painting, Trypillya, is made with oil, and when you look closely, you see it’s full of inventive mark making. There’s something ancient about the color palette, these ochres and browns feel excavated, like earth itself. It has an otherworldly quality, with its winged rider and horse, almost as if time doesn’t exist. It’s a dreamlike landscape of being and the textures of the surface become like memories. Look at how the legs of the horse are depicted, like slender, fragile stilts, so different from its robust body. The shapes are built with repeated lines, it's the repetition that builds them into recognizable forms. I'm reminded of work by Paul Klee, in its simplicity, and yet, Denysenko also embraces the primitive, almost naive, form. There is a rawness here that is deeply felt. Art is never about answers, but about offering new ways of seeing and feeling.