The Last Snow 1965

Karpo Trokhymenko made this painting, "The Last Snow," with oils on canvas. I love how the snow-laden haystack dominates the foreground, a creamy mass of impasto marks. You can almost feel Trokhymenko layering the paint, building up the texture to mimic the snow's weight and density. I can imagine him outside, bracing against the cold, squinting at the scene. Was he trying to capture the fleeting moment of winter's end? Did he quickly apply the strokes, smudging and blending colors like a memory fading? Look how that one determined brushstroke defines the shadow of the haystack, grounding it to the earth! This little painting makes me think of other artists who've tried to wrestle with the landscape, like the Impressionists, each trying to catch something essential about the world around them. Painting is an act of conversing, a painter chimes in and responds to earlier voices through a shared language of form and feeling. Trokhymenko offers his own quiet commentary on nature's cycles, leaving us with something delicate and unresolved.