Emilian Stanev 1978

Georgi Kovachev's painting of Emilian Stanev uses oil paints to bring this portrait to life. It's the kind of painting where you can feel the artist figuring things out as they go along. Look at the background, how Kovachev has applied a bunch of different colours with vertical strokes, almost like rain. Against this, the face is solid, rendered in a very different manner. It's really interesting to see the textures created by these different approaches. The paint is thick, especially on the face, giving it a sculptural quality. You can almost see the marks left by the brush, each stroke building up to form the image. There's a real sense of the artist's hand at work here. Kovachev reminds me a little of Philip Guston, in his sense of form and colour. It's art that invites you to look closely and find something new each time, maybe even something that you weren't expecting to find.