Abstract Composition 1975

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this painting, Abstract Composition, with lots of gorgeous, energetic marks in black, white, yellow, red, and blue. I can just imagine him in the studio, wrestling with it, pushing the paint around, wiping it off. Maybe he felt kind of trapped, as the thick black border suggests, hemmed in somehow? But then all this energy bursts out from the center. Each little stroke is like a breath, a note, a thought. I love how he's not afraid to leave things unresolved, ambiguous. Like, what are those white slashes? Are they covering something up, or pointing towards something new? It's like he's having a conversation with himself, or with painting itself. You see a similar push-and-pull in the work of other abstract painters like Joan Mitchell or even Franz Kline. We're all just trying to figure things out as we go, one brushstroke at a time.