Mykhailivske. Diptych. I 1982

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this diptych in a screenprint, sometime before 1984. Look at how the colors bump up against each other, like a slightly out-of-sync printing press. You can almost feel the squeegee pressing the ink through the screen. I wonder what it was like for Havrylenko to decide where to place each block of color. The green feels dense and heavy, like thick foliage, while the white and orange shapes float in the sky like fluffy clouds. There's a sense of playful experimentation here. The horizontal bands suggest a landscape. It reminds me a bit of Milton Avery's simplified forms and bold color choices, but with a graphic punch. It’s a very human endeavor to create a landscape, to abstract the world and flatten it into shapes and colors and put it all back together again. These artists inspire us, and in turn, we inspire others to create something new.