Beach 1969

Hryhorii Havrylenko made 'Beach' with oil on canvas, though we don’t know exactly when. It’s a painting where the process feels as important as the place, you know? Look at how he builds up the trees with these tiny, dabbed strokes. Each one a little decision, a little moment of green or grey. It’s like he’s not just painting trees, but the very act of seeing them, the way light hits and shifts. There’s something so simple, almost stark, about the way he divides the canvas – sky, trees, land, bam! It reminds me a bit of Milton Avery, that same sense of reducing a scene to its essential shapes and colours. That band of brown and beige at the bottom, it’s so earthy, so grounded, it just holds the whole thing together. But it's the way those greens get bluer at the top that reminds me of Fairfield Porter. It’s like a conversation, artists talking to each other across time.