Ancient tree 1969

Sattar Bahlulzade painted this 'Ancient Tree', we don't know when, in what looks like oil on canvas. The colours are layered and worked, built up like sediment. It gives you this sense of time, that everything in the painting is of geological significance. Look at the foreground, all those small marks like blades of grass or tiny flowers. They build up this incredible surface, a bit like Van Gogh, but even more intense. It's like he’s trying to capture the way the light hits every single thing in the landscape. And then you've got these big, looming trees, almost like they're watching over everything. The way the paint is applied, it feels almost obsessive. It’s not just about depicting a scene, but about the act of painting itself, the slow, deliberate process of building up an image. Like he’s trying to figure out what it all means, one brushstroke at a time. I wonder if he ever saw Milton Avery, I feel there's something similar going on there, they both take the world apart and put it back together on the canvas.