Ukrainian 1958

Here's a "Ukrainian" portrait painting, and I'm immediately drawn to the way the colors and lines are doing a little dance together. It’s like the artist, Hryhorii Havrylenko, was trying to pin down a feeling more than a likeness. The face is soft, almost like a whisper, but then you've got these bold blocks of red and blue that shout, and the black ink lines that give structure. I wonder if Havrylenko was feeling pulled in different directions while he was making this? There’s a tension between the delicate and the assertive. I keep thinking about the weight of the ink in the black lines, compared to the flow of the colorful washes, and how it brings a feeling of the portrait being caught in a moment of becoming. I am reminded of other artists who have worked with portraiture and abstraction simultaneously such as Alice Neel. The ambiguity and uncertainty here opens the work up for us to interpret and reinterpret.