Composition. A sketch of the female image 1963

This sketchy work on paper is by Hryhorii Havrylenko, though we don't know exactly when it was made. Look at the way the blocks of greens and browns are laid down, like trial runs, each a slightly different tone or hue. I imagine Havrylenko, brush in hand, circling the subject. There's an image of a woman in there, but mostly it's about feeling out the colours, getting a sense of the light. It's almost like a map of the artist’s mind at work, figuring things out as he goes, like Philip Guston or someone. I bet he was a great teacher. Notice, too, how the colours don't quite fit within their pencil outlines. It's like he's testing the boundaries, pushing the limits of representation. I think artists are always in conversation with each other, across time and space. Each mark carries the weight of art history, yet it's also utterly new, a fresh start. Painting embraces ambiguity, doesn't it? There's room for so many ways of seeing, of being in the world.