The Child and the Old Woman 1967

Vilen Barsky made this painting, The Child and the Old Woman, with expressive brushstrokes and a somber palette of blues and whites, creating a world of layered marks. You can almost feel the weight of the paint as Barsky applied it, thick in some areas, thin in others, giving the surface a real physicality. I imagine him wrestling with the figures, trying to capture something essential about their relationship. The dripping lines, especially, feel like a release, a letting go of control. Was he thinking about the way generations speak to each other? Or about the way time moves, blurring the lines between youth and age? Maybe he was just in the zone, lost in the act of painting itself. Either way, it reminds me that we’re all part of a larger conversation, riffing off each other, borrowing ideas, and making something new. Painting is like that, a constant process of reinvention and rediscovery, where ambiguity is not a bug, but a feature.