Still Life. Grenades. 1954

Pyotr Konchalovsky made this oil painting, Still Life. Grenades., sometime in the early 1950s. He uses a really interesting mix of colours; muted, earthy tones combined with these vibrant reds and yellows in the fruit, it’s all about the process, the layering. Look at the surface; you can almost feel the texture of the canvas and the way he has applied the paint, it’s neither thick nor thin but somewhere in between, and you can see the brushstrokes. The paint handling around the pears, particularly the green one on the cloth, is so delicate, as if he’s trying to capture the very essence of its pear-ness. This is contrasted with the bold, almost aggressive, strokes used for the pomegranates, giving them a sense of weight and substance. Konchalovsky reminds me of Cezanne, both share this interest in everyday objects and the way they occupy space. But where Cezanne is all about structure and form, Konchalovsky is more intuitive, more about the pure joy of painting. Art, for me, is about embracing this ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations, and revelling in the possibilities.