Judean Desert 1999

Dmytro Kavsan made this landscape painting of the Judean desert using oil on canvas. It's a vast scene, but the marks are really quite small and precise. Look at how Kavsan layers color to build up the textures of the rocks and mountains. There are these incredibly precise brushstrokes which create a layered effect. It’s like he's building up the geography itself, one tiny little mark at a time. I like the way he's captured the light – dusty, warm, almost dreamlike. Notice the foreground – this is where the brushstrokes are denser, where the surface is more built up. Then, as you move toward the background, everything becomes flatter, more diffuse. Kavsan’s painting feels both intimate and expansive, like a conversation between the hand and the eye. It reminds me a bit of the Hudson River School painters, like Frederic Church, who were also obsessed with capturing the sublime in nature. But there's also something very contemporary about Kavsan's approach, a kind of self-awareness of the act of painting itself. It's a reminder that every artwork is a conversation, an ongoing exploration.