Over the Dniester River 1977

Margit Selska made this painting, Over the Dniester River, with oil paint on canvas. It’s a landscape, but one viewed through a very particular lens. The earth tones and muted pinks give the scene an emotional resonance. You can almost feel the dampness in the air and the heaviness of the light. Selska’s touch is all over the place; the paint is applied directly and expressively. In the bottom right corner, you can see a dark tree; its branches reaching up and across the canvas are applied with thick, impasto strokes of paint. The individual marks build into an image with a real sense of volume. It puts me in mind of some of Gustav Klimt’s landscapes, where the natural world becomes a surface for painterly experimentation. And like a lot of great painting, the beauty of this piece lies in the open-endedness of its vision.