Turtles

"Turtles"
canvas, original technique, 60х60cm
2023

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The image of turtles in this work is not tied to natural idyll or simple observation of the animal world. It emerges instead as a system of ancient, slow forms carrying both the weight of time and a strange inner endurance. The concentric green, blue-black, and ochre structures evoke at once shells, stone cross-sections, organs of memory, and celestial bodies. Against the dark ground, they seem to rise from depth and gather into a dense core where one form passes into another, making it impossible to clearly separate the living from the geological, the bodily from the planetary. The large central form on the right is especially powerful — it suggests an eye, a vortex, an inner abyss that draws the gaze inward and refuses to let it remain on the surface.

For me, the turtle here is not merely a creature, but an image of slow, almost archaic being — protected and vulnerable at the same time. The shell reads like a casing of memory, a form of survival that keeps the traces of time within itself. That is why the work is held not by narrative, but by a state of deep antiquity, slowness, and hidden force. It is compelling because life is shown here not as forward motion, but as persistent existence within darkness, pressure, and duration.