Reddish 2014

Timur Akhriev made this painting titled 'Reddish', sometime recently. It is a fever dream of reds and oranges. I like to think of the surface as built up from layers of bold strokes, each one a question asked and answered by the artist. The woman, the model, in her matching headscarf and patterned shirt has such stillness in her eyes that it's easy to imagine Akhriev in the act of painting. I imagine him stepping back, squinting, making marks, and then stepping forward again to revise, scrape back, and layer. His movements might be like those of Morandi, but in red. I can almost feel the texture of the paint, thick and luscious in some areas, scraped back to reveal earlier layers in others. Maybe it’s about how all painters build on the shoulders of their predecessors. It's a conversation across time, where ideas are exchanged, challenged, and reinterpreted. And in this Akhriev creates his own space to feel, be, and think.