Evening (colour insert from Abracadabra) 2019

This is Pavlo Makov's "Evening (colour insert from Abracadabra)", a large piece awash in an orange glow. It’s hard to say when it was made, but I imagine it was a real balancing act of planning and letting go. The artist has built up layers, shifting between a naturalistic rendering and this surreal, architectural, futuristic vision. You have this almost botanical study, like a page from a medieval manuscript, sprouting from what looks like some futuristic city plan. The plant and buildings are rendered in thin washes, which are set against a dark, heavy ground. I can imagine Pavlo, wrestling with the push and pull of the image. The way it all sits together makes me think of other image-makers, say, maybe Piranesi, but with this crazy, sci-fi twist. It's like he’s in conversation with the past but dragging it into some wild, imagined future. That's the beauty of painting, isn't it? It's always a conversation. It's never really finished.