Awaiting 1987

Georgi Kovachev made this painting, Awaiting, with oils, and it feels like the blues and greens were coaxed into being, layered and luminous, like a cloudy day, thick with atmosphere. I get the sense that Kovachev was deeply empathetic, attuned to the longings and melancholy hanging in the air after the second world war. You can feel the weight of waiting. Look at the embrace, the cool tones. The surface has a glow to it, like a memory. I wonder if, while he was working, Kovachev was thinking about how we carry each other's sorrows, and maybe also a bit about how much paintings can hold. It reminds me of other painters like Paula Modersohn-Becker, who was able to convey the weight of the human condition with such limited means. Painters are always in conversation with each other, even across time. They are sharing something unique about the embodied experience of the world in which ambiguity and uncertainty can open up new ways of understanding ourselves and each other.