Flying Carpet 1937

Georgi Mashev’s painting gives you a feeling of being in motion, it feels like it was made with oil paint on canvas, in a moment of painterly excitement! You can almost see the artist layering those strokes, like he’s building up the figure from the ground up. I imagine Mashev moving around the canvas, shifting and adjusting, letting the image emerge through intuition as much as intention. The paint isn’t too thick, but it has that juicy quality that makes you wanna reach out and touch it. The way he handles the figure, it's like she's about to take off into the unknown. Maybe Mashev was dreaming of escape himself, when he made it? I love how a single gesture, that slight tilt of the head, communicates so much. It’s like he's saying, "Here’s my own take on folk art," while also tipping his hat to a longer history of painters playing with movement. Artists are always in dialogue, you know, riffing off each other, and it’s cool to see how Mashev adds his voice to the conversation.