Dnepropetrovsk in Winter 1985

Petros Malayan painted ‘Dnepropetrovsk in Winter’ with watercolor, and you can feel the chill! Look at how Malayan has built up the image in delicate washes, like the slow accumulation of snowfall. The strokes are so light and fluid; he’s coaxing the scene into being, not forcing it. I bet he had to work fast, trying to capture the fleeting light before the next flurry. I wonder if he stood in the snow while painting this, his fingers numb, but his eyes wide open, drinking in the muted palette of winter, the way the light bounces off the snow-covered roofs, the bare trees reaching up like skeletal fingers. Notice the touches of bright colour – that vivid blue building, the red figure by the fence – like little sparks of life against the hushed landscape. Malayan’s work reminds me of other painters who captured the quiet beauty of the everyday. Painters are always in conversation with each other that way, aren’t they? Sharing ways of seeing, always open for reinterpretation.