Fire 1981

Oleksandr Aksinin made this drawing, titled "Fire," with ink and colored pencil. I love how he’s built up the surface with these tiny marks. It's so process-oriented; you can almost see him, lost in thought, adding one mark at a time. The texture is amazing; that tight cross-hatching creates a sort of visual buzz, like the air is shimmering with heat. The colors, mostly in this hot, earthy red, contribute to that feeling. The central image is really striking, those shapes in the dark oval; they remind me a bit of a futuristic machine or maybe some kind of strange deity. Look at the way he's balanced the detailed drawing with these large areas of flat color. It gives the whole thing a really cool, almost architectural feel. Aksinin’s work reminds me a little of Paul Klee, in the sense that they both had this playful way of combining abstraction with figuration, but there’s also an intensity in Aksinin's work that sets him apart. It's a reminder that art is a conversation, and every artist brings their own unique voice to the table.