The Houses are Illuminated by the Moonlight 1983

Ivan Marchuk made "The Houses are Illuminated by the Moonlight" with layers of thin, almost frantic lines, built up into this glowing vision. I wonder about the impulse to create a world with so much energy in the sky. Imagine Marchuk, moving his hand across the surface, each stroke a whisper of light, a building block of this shimmering cosmos. What's amazing is the light seems to be woven from the same stuff as the dark, like the houses are breathing the same cosmic air as the moon. I can see him, lost in the dance of the brush, finding a kind of ecstatic vision in repetition. Marchuk’s obsessive technique reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin, but wilder, more untamed. It's like he’s not just painting what he sees, but painting what he feels about seeing. Painting becomes this record of lived experience, a testament to the artist's ongoing quest to articulate something ineffable through colour, texture, and form.