Fellows marching 1971

Volodymyr Loboda’s ‘Fellows Marching’ is rendered with blocks of colour in shades of blue, green, brown, and yellow, applied with confident brushstrokes on a rectangular canvas. You can sense the artist standing at his easel, considering how to translate his world into flat planes of colour. How to make the abstract shapes work together? It's a puzzle, isn't it? Looking at the texture, you can imagine the feeling of the bristles on canvas, the smell of the oil paint mixing. That thick black line that sits above an upper lip implies a moustache – a flash of dark humour. And that uncertain white mark – is it smoke? Or the vague memory of a cloud? Painters, we're all looking at each other’s work, thinking, how did they do that? What were they thinking? Loboda is one of many artists who make paintings, and in turn, inspire us all. Each painting is an invitation to see the world anew, through the eyes of another.