It's Just Beginning (2025) Original Pastel Drawing by Maxim Bondarenko

'It’s Just Beginning' places a vivid column of flowers against a wide, dark valley at dawn. The composition rises vertically: warm orange and yellow blooms flare outward, surrounded by white and violet blossoms, all built from assertive, layered pastel strokes. The black paper deepens the saturation, while the white under-painting allows the color strokes to perform autonomously from the black ground and each petal to glow from within.

The composition is both complex and simultaneously blunt. It doesn't lead you gently from the flowers to the mountains; it forces a jump across a dark, murky mid-ground. This gap is vital. It creates a sense of scale that feels slightly lonely, liminal, but also adventerous. The flowers are intimate, almost close enough to touch, while the mountains maybe are a cold, geological fact but also are notes of coming day, or maybe - life, its journey and discoveries.

Materials used:

Oil pastel on black paper

Details:

• Pastel drawing on Paper
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 30.48 x 45.72 x 0.25cm (unframed)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Impressionistic
• Subject: Flowers and plants