Bridge 

Editor: Here we have Pyotr Konchalovsky’s “Bridge,” an oil painting. It looks to me like the blues really dominate, making the whole scene feel both peaceful and a bit mysterious. What's your take? Curator: It's funny you mention "mystery," because I find this bridge scene feels so familiar and dreamlike, like something snatched from my own memory, perhaps a half-remembered trip to the countryside. Editor: Half-remembered is a great way to put it! It's a very evocative image... Curator: Exactly! The expressive brushwork and the vivid colours do not quite render it accurately. I would be hard pressed to state the season. But they stir something... a sensation more than a depiction. It almost reminds me of how a poem feels, less about the narrative and more about evoking sensations. You get what I mean? Editor: Totally. So you are saying, it's less about the bridge itself and more about… a feeling of a bridge? Curator: Yes! It’s the essence of the bridge, distilled through Konchalovsky’s particular vision. Perhaps even what a bridge *means*. Think about what a bridge is intended to do -- allow passage between discrete spaces. And how that might affect you emotionally... Does it prompt optimism? Does the artist want us to move to a place of hope? Or maybe we should be wary? He leaves that for the viewer to resolve. Editor: I love that – the idea that it’s about movement, possibilities. I came in seeing blues and calmness but now I am looking for something beyond the image, something between two separate places... Curator: Precisely! These old paintings still have plenty to teach us, I feel. Editor: Definitely given me something to think about.