Monologue 1989

Oleg Holosiy made this painting, Monologue, with furious brushstrokes and a pretty limited colour palette. I bet he laid the painting on the floor and walked around it, adding marks from every angle. I love to imagine him there, brush loaded, pacing around the canvas, thinking, and then suddenly lunging to make a mark – maybe that slash of white at the top. The whole painting seems to be about these back-and-forth gestures, a kind of call and response between the artist and the emerging image. What might have been going through his head as he created it? Maybe something about life and death...I get a kind of dark humour from it. There is an ongoing conversation between artists. Holosiy would have known about all sorts of painting. And now we get to look and think too. It is about embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.