The Story of a Painting. Four Interesting Ones

I happened to paint four works all at once. With indecent speed. It was the first exploratory session on the theme of mass and disintegration. An event astonishing in its generosity. Such fertility is typical of the earliest searches, when the theme has not yet had time to fossilize in the mind.

But the works became interesting not because they turned out especially successful. Rather, because for the first time the paintings proved capable of changing so radically even after the ink had dried.

Sharp Petals

This painting seemed successful even at first glance. A strong diagonal and an arc — delicate yet energetic brushstrokes.

The painting felt as though it did not fit within the sheet. I watched it while it dried. It created an unusual spatial sensation: an explosion, a supernova. Spaciousness suited it so well. Remembering what had happened with Silence, I decided to experiment with the size of the backing and left wide asymmetrical margins. And the force sleeping within the central knot unfurled its wings.

The seal. It could have ruined everything, disturbed the fragile balance — the composition was already concentrated enough. But what if the seal were moved into the margins? Unexpected. New. How would the painting live and breathe within space then? In a completely transparent frame it would become dizzyingly delicate and resonant. Before, the gesture carried the work. Now the entire sheet does. Where will this lead me?

Tension

Here I decided to “drive” the composition into the edge of the sheet. The main knot lies close to the border, and all the energy spills beyond the limits of the painting. The work turned out fairly good, though not especially memorable. This emerging movement desperately asked for emptiness around it. It had already begun to stretch the space, but something was missing. And so I carried the seal into the corner.

I stretched the tension between the form and the seal to its limit, to the feeling that it was about to snap. And only once it had reached its peak did I finally place the seal into that point. The tension remained. It is felt almost physically.

Just paper, ink, and a red seal stretched into infinity.

Bloom

It turned out textured. The brushstrokes were interesting, alive, yet somehow nothing held together. It was the weakest work of the session. But it was immediate, and so I decided to keep it. At least for sale.

Sale or no sale, the seal still had to be added. I approached it casually: I’ll just stamp it and be done. But then I placed the seal mock-up on the sheet and was startled. The painting suddenly gathered itself and became complete.

That movement had always been there: unformed, beating within the texture of the stains, but too quiet. The seal, like a hook, caught hold of it, and suddenly everything fell into place — the main arc, the cyclone-like swirls of pigment. Everything submitted itself to a single impulse.

The painting became interesting, serious — serious enough to enter the series. Its incompleteness became a question. Dynamic. Material. Alive.

Defiance

This work is difficult. It is… ungainly. It catches the eye, yet irritates at the same time. In fact, these were merely the first touches of the brush in the session — testing the material, warming up. It was not supposed to become anything at all. And yet you return to it again and again, trying once more to understand this contradiction.

On the edge of failure — this work could just as easily be thrown away as included in the series.

The essence lies in the fact that it contains a very risky movement. It is not diagonal, but almost horizontal — within the narrow space of the sheet. Usually my compositions are calmer: cascading, diagonal. But I like this new rebellion, this discomfort. A challenge to prettiness and prim compositions. My series had been missing precisely this kind of charge.

Here too, the seal became decisive. It continues the arc of the supporting points and pulls the composition slightly downward.

With it, the painting becomes extremely interesting within the series… far more interesting than some earlier works, despite — or perhaps because of — its outrageous imperfection.

And then, in what feels like the most instructive of all cautionary tales, I somehow managed to ruin the seal.

I thought: “If the three quieter works will definitely have paler seals, then perhaps this wild one can withstand a more active version.”

Said and done. Except the seal did not print fully. A routine situation, and for such cases I keep watercolor nearby. I added a stroke, but it turned out too bright. Trying to save it, I decided to dilute the pigment slightly and weave it into the existing seal. Only there was more water than necessary.

A drop fell.

Right onto the seal.

A full splat.

And now my wild painting has a wild seal as well. Had this happened to any other work, it would have been the end. But here — it fits as though it had always belonged there.