In Carolinas 

Curator: This vibrant painting is titled "In Carolinas" by Timur Akhriev, created with oil paint using the impasto technique, and demonstrating the plein-air method. Editor: Wow, the water reflecting those autumn colors is just stunning! There’s a dreamlike quality to it; a mix of realism and the ideal. It makes me want to be right there. Curator: I agree. Akhriev is skillfully playing with light and color. It has a distinct impressionistic influence. Notice how the brushstrokes create texture and capture the feeling of the Carolinas' landscape? There are small buildings in the mid-ground, perhaps indicating the growing infrastructure within a natural setting. Editor: That’s a key point. We're often romanticizing nature while overlooking how much it's actively being developed and altered, usually displacing long-time populations who inhabited the land previously. Is this piece an homage or a commentary? I'd say that art has a purpose if it stimulates dialogue concerning such land disputes. Curator: Well, the title itself feels like an homage, a straightforward acknowledgement of the geographical location. But, you’re right, perhaps the artist also intended a deeper meditation on our relationship with the natural world and the built environment within it. Editor: Considering this could very well be the American South, what implications does this bring, in view of landscape paintings from that era? Is this work perhaps offering an evolution on depictions of nature that once strategically erased marginalized people? Curator: Landscape painting as a genre was historically utilized in the service of nation building and colonization, and even now its aesthetic appeal has connections to socio-economic and racial privilege and leisure, such as, who exactly has the resources and time to simply exist "in nature." This artwork raises important questions in that regard. Editor: Exactly. Even a seemingly straightforward landscape painting holds so much potential for sparking important conversations about environmental and social justice. I guess that's why I find it compelling, the opportunity for dialogue and to explore our relationships. Curator: Absolutely, it brings a unique contemporary viewpoint to the established genre of landscape. Thank you for expanding how we consider this piece!