Cucumbers 1997

Volodymyr Loboda painted Cucumbers in 1997, and you can see the hand of the artist right there in those greens and blues. It's not about slickness, it’s about the paint itself, thick and juicy like the pickles themselves. Loboda's application here is so direct, so un-fussy. Look at the way the paint sits on the surface, chunky and opaque. The brushstrokes aren’t trying to hide; they're part of the story. The bucket almost becomes an abstract form. The eye travels around the painting looking for edges and definition in this mass of paint, but it's all texture and color. Take that cucumber that runs across the center, its dark skin sits heavily on the canvas, and you can almost feel the rough texture of the pickle in your hand. It reminds me a little of some of Guston’s late work, where the subject matter is almost secondary to the sheer joy of putting paint on canvas. And like Guston, Loboda reminds us that painting can be a conversation, a back-and-forth between what we see and what we feel.