Four attempts at self-portrait 1990

Oleg Holosiy made this large oil painting called ‘Four attempts at self-portrait’ using brown and yellow tones. It’s like he’s wrestling with his own image, trying to pin it down. I can imagine him stepping back, squinting, then diving back in with the brush. Each panel feels like a new take, a slightly different angle or mood. It is a real ‘painterly’ painting, the brushstrokes are so present, almost violent. The paint is thick. Each mark feels like a decision, a moment of trying to capture something elusive. I wonder what he was thinking about, what he was feeling. There's something about the repetition and the variation that reminds me of Warhol, but with a more raw, searching energy. You sense Holosiy is really trying to get at something, and that ‘something’ is just out of reach. These paintings feel like a conversation not just with himself, but with the whole history of portraiture. Holosiy is in dialogue with other painters across time, grappling with similar questions of identity, representation, and the self.