Village Landscape 1957

Karpo Trokhymenko made this Village Landscape with oil on canvas and, well, what a friendly painting. The colours are muted but there is a definite joy in the mark making, the dabs of paint. It looks like Trokhymenko was in love with the process of applying the paint to the surface, one stroke at a time. It's all about texture here, the colours are quite naturalistic and the composition is pretty conventional, but the surface is alive with brushstrokes. If you look closely at the wheat field, you can see how each stalk is rendered with individual touches of paint, some yellow, some brown, some green, it's almost mosaic-like in its construction. The colour is neither thin nor thick, but the paint is applied so that each stroke remains distinct. The clouds are a blend of lavender and pink, a dreamy sky. I'm reminded of Van Gogh, a little, but with a Slavic twist. Like him, Trokhymenko shows us that painting is an ongoing conversation across time, open to interpretation.