Green Landscape 1997

Art Historian: Editor: Alright, next up is "Green Landscape" by Tetyana Yablonska from 1997. It looks like it's made with mixed media and oil paint. What strikes me immediately is how vibrant and alive the greenery feels, almost overwhelmingly so. What do you make of this piece? Art Historian: "Overwhelmingly so" – I love that! It feels like diving headfirst into nature’s sketchbook, doesn't it? Yablonska’s all-over painting, her vibrant colors...it's like she's channeling a garden’s hidden energy, something Post-Impressionists did so well. Notice that intense impasto – the paint's practically sculpted! Almost throbbing! Do you get a sense of the season being portrayed here, perhaps as the trees awaken after Winter? Editor: I do, now that you mention it. There's definitely something about the colour and light. It’s spring, isn’t it? All fresh and new...But is it a bit…much? All that texture and swirling color kind of distracts me from actually seeing a landscape, do you know what I mean? Art Historian: Haha! "Too much" is just right! Perhaps that's precisely her point? Nature in hyperdrive, rendered not as it passively *is*, but as it intensely *feels*. And you are drawn in despite the density of marks.. she definitely channels someone like Van Gogh or Monet here. What I like about her figuration within this impression is that she leaves room for imagination, or projecting into this space, I feel this piece becomes less about documentation and more about conjuring feeling, and the memory of places, do you see it too? Editor: Hmmm, I think I am beginning to get your point. I didn’t think about her going for feel over a real view, but that’s interesting to consider and a useful observation in looking at Post-Impressionism, for sure. Art Historian: Exactly. It shows us that landscapes aren't just pretty pictures but expressions of something much more significant than location. Now I want to run barefoot through a field... though maybe one that’s been rendered a *little* less intensely!