Chernobyl Madonna 1980

Vudon Baklytsky's Chernobyl Madonna is a painting of the late 20th century made with oil on canvas using a strong palette of blues, reds, and oranges. The painting, for me, feels like it’s come into being through many shifts. It seems he’s painted it alla prima, wet on wet, with pretty thin paint layers. I imagine him thinking, “How can I build a world, a feeling, with these colours?” It feels like the colours are fighting each other. The blue figure is trapped within the composition, a symbol of sadness, and he has handled the blue pigment in such a gentle way, that it communicates the feeling of being trapped. Baklytsky's work, though unique to him, shares with other painters a will to build a new image out of found fragments of our past, turning them into something that embodies lived experience. In this way, artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting remains a powerful form of expression because it embraces multiple interpretations, reflecting our ambiguous and ever-changing world.