Armada 2015

Timur Akhriev made this painting, Armada, using oil paint in what looks like a pretty direct, intuitive way. The painting feels immediate with its simple strokes of color, and it’s as though the artist wasn’t aiming for perfection, but rather, for a certain kind of presence. The pink background is so flat and aggressively cheerful, in contrast to the way the owl is carefully constructed from lots of different shades of grey, brown and blue. Look at how those different shades make up the wings, and how the brush strokes follow the direction of the feathers. Then check out the owl’s talons – those shapes are built up from loads of little strokes. What I love about oil paint is how you can keep pushing it around, reworking it, and it still holds the history of those changes. You get the feeling that Akhriev is working in the spirit of someone like Francis Bacon, who took the tradition of figurative painting and stretched it to its limit.