The Death of Actaeon 1988

Vasiliy Ryabchenko made this painting "The Death of Actaeon" using paint on canvas. I like how he’s not trying to be neat; the pink underpainting is visible, reminding us that a painting comes from somewhere. The colour palette is intriguing; the pink is fleshy, and the brown dogs are layered wet-on-wet, like quick notations. The two figures on the left embrace, but there is also a certain tension in the way that the artist renders the scene with harsh lines and angular forms. The dogs attacking the stag have a visceral energy, their forms broken and chaotic, and the mark making is active and present. There’s a kind of awkwardness in the composition that is not unpleasant, like a drawing, or a memory. There is a painterly approach to mythological subject matter which reminds me of late works by Philip Guston. In Ryabchenko’s piece, like in Guston’s paintings, we can find beauty in the messy and imperfect. There’s no one way to read it, and that’s what makes it interesting.