Chameleon 2008

Stepan Ryabchenko made this digital artwork, Chameleon, sometime after 1987. This is a digital painting, but it still feels like painting in the sense that it feels like the process is front and center. Look at all those vibrant, saturated colors – reds, blues, greens – twisting and turning in a kind of ecstatic dance. You can almost feel the artist’s hand, guiding and shaping each form with intuitive precision. I imagine Ryabchenko experimenting, pushing the digital tools to their limits, maybe even making mistakes and then turning those mistakes into something beautiful and unexpected. See that one little purple flourish tucked away in the middle? It feels like a little moment of grace, a spontaneous gesture. The best painting is always in conversation with what's come before, a constant exchange of ideas across time. This artist uses a computer but the approach is similar. They're embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, and allowing for multiple readings.