Autumn 1964

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this small painting, Autumn, with oil on canvas. I imagine he was outside, looking at the changing colors of the leaves, maybe even shivering a little in the cool air. Look at how he's dabbed the paint, almost like a mosaic, building up the leaves with little squares of green, yellow, and brown. You can almost feel the texture of the paint, thick in some places, thinner in others. See that stroke of dark green right there? It's like a shadow, giving depth to the tree, making it feel alive. What was Havrylenko thinking as he made it? Was he trying to capture a fleeting moment? Was he just trying to record what was there, or was he trying to express something deeper? Painters like Havrylenko are part of a long conversation, each one building on what came before, trying to say something new about what it's like to be alive. Painting isn’t just about what things look like; it's about feeling, about thinking, about trying to make sense of the world.