Composition 1982

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this watercolor in an unknown year, and it’s like looking at summer memories. The top is all red, a hot, saturated kind of red, bleeding into the watery blues, oranges and yellows below. Up close, you see these aren’t just blocks of color. They are brushstrokes, each one a little decision, a dab, a drag, a moment of the hand. Look how the colors pool and mingle on the paper, creating these soft, blurry edges. The paint is thin, transparent, like looking through stained glass. The white of the paper peeks through, giving it all a luminous quality. I’m thinking about Arthur Dove, who was also feeling his way through abstraction, finding the landscape in pure color and form. It’s about seeing, feeling, and then trusting the paint to lead the way. There’s no right or wrong way to look, just an invitation to get lost in the colors.