Ripples on the Ocean – Vladimir Kush

I usually write about art from a very personal perspective, as generally there is no other way to view art.  Sometime there will be a historic or political backdrop, but ultimately it is the audience that makes or breaks art.  Back in 2017 I wrote an article about Escher which was published on this date.  This is one of my most visited articles which really does make me happy.  The artwork itself is remarkable, but I think it is the sentiment itself that makes the piece so popular.  In that article I talked about how there are people that you just click with and irrespective of situation or distance you will maintain that bond as you couldn’t image your life without them.  So it felt only natural to mention this in my opening gambit on this article.

There are people that will come and go from your life, but there are those who are a constant, who wouldn’t step away through your darkest points and will flourish with you in your successes.  Those are the people who you can confidently say they are an eternal.  There is a love that runs deep and is beyond the feelings of lust and romance, which only someone that you can truly be yourself with will provide.  That sort of true friendship is rare and unyielding.  I am very thankful for the people that I have in my life that are like this, as they have provided me the support and belief which enables me to do brilliant things like waffle on about one of my great passions – art, and lift me to a point of feeling that I am something special to them.

I bet you are wondering how I am going to relate this opener to this beautiful picture by Vladimir Kush… Well… lets see how I do.

I have written about Kush previously, therefore if you wish to know more about the artist, click the handy link I have provided.

At a glance this piece appears to be of a rippling sea.  A fairly calm sky with some building clouds in the background.  A lone sailboat is in the waters with land seen on the left of the horizon line.

It is only when you look again do you notice the wood in the front right hand corner which then transforms the sea into a tablecloth and the ripples of the sea have been created by peaks and folds in the material.  This transforms this scene from something which is fairly standard to the surreal and has echoes of Rene Magritte’s work.  The simple addition of that right hand corner to this piece starts the audience’s mind racing around the sheer size of the table that can hold a boat, and land yet also define the feeling of endlessness that being out in the middle of the sea gives.

In Indian mythology the ocean represents infinity.  It was a never ending entity that the earth was formed from.  The chaotic nature of the sea produced the lands and the universe around it through its endless motion.  “Ripples on the Ocean” also shows how the ocean is reminiscent to the human subconscious,  constantly moving and formulating ideas which only emerge as they are formed into ideas much like the formation of land in the Indian myths.  From the tiny gesture of the mundane element of wood and cloth it opens the mind to infinite possibilities.

I love the colour pallette of this piece, it is soft yet defines the shadows of the clouds above.  The rays from the sun catching the “sea” and creating dark patches on the ocean cloth.  The colours allude to a dream like state which only add to the surrealism of the piece.

Friedrich Von Schiller wrote “The soul calls upon one sense, the world and beckons the abstract back to within the borders of reality from its unbound journey through infinity”.  The human mind perceives things only in a way in which it can understand, therefore will limit an infinity to boundaries, which is what makes this picture the perfect paradox; an infinite ocean on a table top.

How are you going to bring this back to your opening ramble?  I can hear the questions being asked already.  Well, for those friends that are the eternal in your life, they are like the sea, sometimes calm, occasionally tumultuous, but always energetic and in motion.  Relationships such as these are limitless and not constrained by boundaries.  They are forces of nature from which worlds are created.

If you would like to see more of Kush’s work you can find his website here.

What do you think of when you look at “Ripples on the Ocean”?  Why not tell me in the comments?  Like this post?  Why not share it?