Emerald Moon Forest (2018) Original Oil Painting by Tetiana Surshko

A row of tall pines stands in near-silhouette against a sky that has gone entirely green. Behind them a pale moon rises, and its halo bleeds outward through the branches until the whole upper half of the canvas glows — not blue, not black, but deep emerald, the colour a forest turns in the last minutes before the light goes completely.

I built the painting almost as a monochrome. There is one colour and it does everything: the sky is thinned green glazes laid over a warm ground so the light seems to come from behind the canvas, the trunks are the same green pushed almost to black, and the undergrowth at the bottom is the same green again, opened up with yellow and worked in short upright strokes so the base of the picture stays alive and dense. Nothing is described in detail — the pines are shapes, the moon is a soft disc, the grass is a texture — because at dusk that is exactly how much you actually see.

The verticals are what hold it together. Six or seven trunks run the full height of the canvas and divide it like columns, and everything else happens in the gaps between them.

Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm, painted in 2018. Signed on the front, varnished, sides painted, sold unframed and ready to hang straight out of the box. Part of my Forest Whispers series.

Materials used:

Oil paint, stretched cotton canvas

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 60 x 80 x 1cm (unframed) / 60 x 80cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: Flowers and plants