"Boy" (2021)Oil painting
by Nikifor Swiristuhin

This boy is not a portrait of a specific person. He is a symbolic figure — a moment of vulnerability, innocence, and confusion that lives within all of us, especially in childhood.

I didn’t aim to capture appearance, but rather a state of being — that fragile phase when emotions are raw and visible, when the world feels too large and overwhelming, and you are too small to make sense of it.

The oversized eyes aren’t just a facial feature — they are a way of listening with sight. Through them, the boy gazes at the viewer with distrust, with hope, with a question.

I used a spontaneous, impulsive palette — layers of color overlap like shifting emotions. There are no clean lines here, just as there are no clear, singular feelings in a child’s inner world.

The red lips, the freckles, the asymmetry — they all enhance the sense of imperfection, sincerity, and emotional truth. He is not posing. He simply exists.

"Boy" is a look into that delicate state of being open to the world — despite fear, mistrust, and loneliness.

This artwork is made by traditional technology. Oil paints, canvas and linseed oil.
The picture is made in the author's method of associative analysis.
I think that this is somewhere post-expressionism.

Materials used:

Linseed oil on canvas.

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 80 x 95 x 2cm (unframed) / 80 x 95cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits

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