Bouquet of flowers 1960

Kateryna Bilokur made this *Bouquet of Flowers* without a date, and it bursts with a naive but very knowing sense of color. The way she builds up the forms, it’s all about the process, she’s not trying to trick you into thinking it’s “real.” Look at how the blues and greens in the background are scumbled, almost like a memory of a garden. Then, bam! The explosion of reds, whites, oranges, and purples are applied so delicately, like each petal is a little thought. Notice those tiny white flowers cascading down? Each one is a careful dab, a testament to the joy in repetition. I think of Hilma af Klint, another visionary who found the spiritual in the floral, but Bilokur has a raw, grounded energy. It’s like she’s not just painting flowers, she’s painting the feeling of flowers, the memory of a summer day, and that's something to behold.