Composition (Self-portrait) 1964

Hryhorii Havrylenko made this self-portrait out of simple watercolor shapes. It's funny, isn't it? How a person's inner world can come out looking like a stack of pastel blocks. I can almost see him there, Havrylenko, hunched over this piece of paper, trying to translate the complexities of self into something simple. What's so great about watercolors is how they lend themselves to fluidity and transparency. Look how the colors bleed into one another; you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the page. It's almost like a dance, a delicate balance between control and letting go. I bet other artists working in the mid-century were doing similar things, trying to find new ways of seeing the world, like the abstract expressionists. But it's always interesting to me how each artist arrives at their unique vocabulary. This kind of work reminds us that painting is an ongoing conversation and that artists inspire each other.