Winter Evening 1990

Ivan Marchuk made this painting, Winter Evening, with delicate brushstrokes, and a melancholic palette of ochre and black. I can imagine him, brush in hand, building up the layers of paint, line by line. The artist coaxes us into a dreamscape, where what appear to be haystacks in a field are actually swirling skeins of ink. And the trees in the background, with their thorny branches, are equally ominous. It’s got me wondering whether the artist was thinking about the state of his homeland while he was making the painting. The color palette is mostly muted, except for the fiery ochre, a kind of beacon in the darkness. Maybe a sign of hope? What I love about paint on a surface is how it captures feeling. It embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, which allows for multiple interpretations. Artists are always in dialogue across time, you know, responding to each other’s gestures and ideas.