The Last Snow 1965

Karpo Trokhymenko made this painting, “The Last Snow,” with oil on canvas, and you can almost feel the chill! The marks are laid down with confidence, with juicy daubs of paint creating a thick crust of snow, with the colours all muted, like it’s a grey day. But then you see the hay poking through the snow, those warmer yellows and browns that remind you that even in the depths of winter, life persists. Look closely at the haystack on the left, where Trokhymenko has used a dry brush, dragging the paint to create a sense of texture and form. It’s a simple, direct way of painting, not trying to trick you into believing this is anything other than paint on canvas, but also capturing the essence of the scene. I’m reminded a little of some of Fairfield Porter's paintings, where he also finds the extraordinary in the everyday. Ultimately, it’s that tension between abstraction and representation, between the material and the image, that makes the painting so compelling.