Autumn Gold 1994

Tetyana Yablonska made this golden scene, Autumn Gold, with oil on canvas, and it feels like a warm hug. The brushwork is pretty direct, not fussy, and that yellowy-gold color—it's like she's bottled up the feeling of late afternoon sunlight. There's something really inviting in the materiality of this piece. The paint looks thick in places, especially where the light catches the canvas, and it makes you want to reach out and touch it. You can almost feel the artist wrestling with the image. Look at the way she's built up the layers around the canvas on the easel; the strokes are so full of energy, but precise enough to describe both the light and the form. It reminds me a little of Fairfield Porter’s paintings of his house in Maine. Both artists find something beautiful in the everyday, and both seem to understand that a painting is never really finished, just abandoned at some point. Art is all about that give and take, that back-and-forth, and there's no right or wrong answer.