Forrest 1975

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this painting, Forrest, and you can really see the hand of the artist in the work. The surface is built from countless dabs of color, greens and blues mostly, a kind of pointillist approach, only looser. The way he’s worked, it's less about representing a specific place and more about capturing the feeling of being in the forest, you know? The air, the light filtering through the leaves. There’s a haze, like the world is seen through a soft filter, and this adds to the emotional tone. It’s melancholic, but also peaceful. The brushwork gives the painting a real sense of texture. It is almost like you could reach out and touch the leaves. You can really feel the physicality of the paint. It brings to mind other landscape painters like Isaac Levitan, who sought to express something beyond the purely representational. It is not so much about capturing a likeness of the forest but something deeper, and more difficult to put into words. It’s about feeling.