The village of Stebliv 1957

This landscape of the village of Stebliv was made in ink by Hryhorii Havrylenko. I'm thinking of the artist standing on the roadside, squinting in the sun. The way the ink pools in some areas suggests he worked quickly, trying to capture something fleeting about the light and atmosphere. See how the lines vary in thickness? Some are bold and definite, others scratchy and tentative. I imagine Havrylenko making choices about what to include and what to leave out. He must have been interested in the road and the telegraph pole as linear forms, but also maybe as symbols of a changing world. What was life like in the village of Stebliv, in the Ukraine, when this picture was made? The act of painting is an attempt to make sense of the world. And by looking, we join that conversation.