Near Autumn 

Curator: What a striking image, a burst of life held within the frame. Timur Akhriev seems to capture a fleeting moment with his oil painting, "Near Autumn." Editor: It's got a certain charm, doesn't it? Sort of an explosion of green and the occasional juicy red apple. Makes you wanna just reach out and grab one, even if it's just a painted fantasy. It makes me nostalgic, almost homesick, but for a home I never knew. Curator: And in that sense of 'almost,' there lies a poignant tension. Given the plein-air technique employed, Akhriev brings us intimately close to nature's display of abundance right before its transition. There is that melancholic, beautiful pre-autumnal space, before nature's transformation. The abundance feels especially significant given today's issues of food security and environmental change. Editor: Totally get that. It’s like nature's got all this stuff to give, all this fruit, but we're somehow distanced from it. Makes me wonder what the heck we're doing with it all, you know? Like, are we appreciating this, or are we too busy staring at our screens? Curator: Indeed, the artist here is engaging in a quiet, almost radical act—direct observation, highlighting our fraught relationship with nature, which intersects with class, race, and geopolitical power imbalances impacting access to sustenance. Editor: Wow, you really take it there! And that's good, actually. I just see a pretty painting, you see the whole socio-political thing. I do like that, even though sometimes my brain hurts trying to keep up. Curator: That is precisely where art creates change – within our multiple ways of seeing, experiencing, understanding and questioning. In it's style, it reminds me of other artists that painted outdoor, such as Sisley and Monet. We bring a host of historical understandings and critical awareness that are part of the dialogue itself. Editor: Well, I think it’s really something, that a simple painting of an apple tree can spark all these thoughts and feelings. Kinda makes you realize that nothing’s ever really simple, is it? It just hits different when you really stop and look. Curator: Precisely. Hopefully visitors will be prompted to ask themselves about their place in our quickly changing ecological landscape, one apple at a time. Editor: Okay, "one apple at a time"...I like that. Very Zen. Thanks for blowing my mind a little.