Autumn House 1984

Oleg Holosiy made this painting, Autumn House, using oil paint on what looks like a heavily primed surface. I imagine Holosiy working on this picture – building it up in layers, scraping back, adding more, and letting the painting become a site of excavation. There’s a real push and pull. The paint is thick in some areas and thin in others, creating a sense of depth and texture, you can almost feel the artist working with the brush, dragging it across the surface. There’s a rawness to this painting, something unresolved. It makes me think of other painters like Joan Mitchell, who used gesture and color to convey emotion and feeling. You sense that Holosiy is part of an ongoing conversation with other artists, both past and present, trying to make sense of the world through painting. Ultimately, it’s a painting that embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings.