Dzoraget 1990

Petros Malayan painted ‘Dzoraget’ with watercolor in 1990, and I can almost see him there, working en plein air! There’s something so immediate about watercolor. You really have to go for it, committing to the mark. I'm imagining him laying down those washes of blues, grays and ochres, building up the forms of these stacked, architectural structures. The buildings are all at different heights and orientations with so many windows. He renders them so economically with such little detail, yet each has so much character. The eye just hops around the painting like it does when one is in a city. It’s like a puzzle, the way Malayan fits everything together. It reminds me of other painters that construct space in unconventional ways, like Philip Guston. You see him building the surface, making adjustments, editing, adding, finding his way through the painting. So much can be said with just a few strokes. We can all learn from Malayan’s capacity to make room for the viewer’s imagination!