Vase with red and yellow flowers 1965

David Burliuk made this painting, Vase with red and yellow flowers, with what looks like watercolor or gouache, and maybe some crayon too. It’s this great combination of really bright and light colors against darker colors, like he’s exploring different ways of seeing the same thing. I love how the surface is so alive with these little marks and scribbles. The way he's built up the layers of paint creates this feeling that everything is vibrating with energy. Look at the vase, how he's used these blues and purples to suggest the roundness of it, but then also left these areas of raw paper showing through. It's like he's not trying to hide the process of making the painting, but rather inviting you to see it. Burliuk's work reminds me a lot of the Fauvist painters like Matisse. They were all about using color in this really bold, expressive way to create a feeling more than a representation of reality. To me, art is all about embracing ambiguity and finding new ways to see the world.