Morning, ficus, swallows (colour insert from Abracadabra) 2019

Pavlo Makov made this, 'Morning, ficus, swallows' most likely with a brush and paint and maybe some water to thin the paint. It's got these bold swathes of red and a strange blue sky, with what seems like a potted ficus in front of it all. I can imagine Pavlo, there, grappling with the surface, trying to get the right tone for the light as it hits the leaves. Maybe he had a ficus in his studio? Or was it just a ghost of a memory of one? The paint is applied in such a way that it feels like a quick impression, but then when you look closer, there is a whole city scape at the bottom of the painting. It's really two paintings in one! I'm wondering if he was thinking about Morandi when he made this. That quiet stillness. It makes me want to go back to my studio and push paint around. It's an exchange—artists seeing each other, responding, changing. Paintings are never really finished.