Holland

Alexander Korolev: Holland

Movement is a trick question.

Like every painting filled with movement, "Holland" never changes except in our mind's eye as we continue to look into it.

I began a life of constant movement in a propeller driven aircraft when I was six years old.

The desert beneath our plane wasn't moving, except for the waves of heat that lifted and slid our little plane around so it moved my tiny stomach and I needed a barf bag, for the first and only time in my life.

I haven't really stopped moving since. Through more than twenty countries, thousands of people have moved me through tens of thousands of experiences that remain immobile in my memory.

Like the stream and rushes and trees in this painting, I never truly even moved except in my relation to thoughts and perceptions.

So what creates that sense of movement?

One of a fine artist's rare gifts to every one of us perceivers is a set of colors he uses as a vehicle of movement.

Hidden inside the blocks and smears of color are sinuous strokes, gradations and streaks that add movement that we'll miss if we aren't diligent.

Each color is like another sign of movement; a stream caressing its sharp banks, the yellow trees moving fro and the blue branches to; a mountain sliding into sky and back again without needing to declare itself, because its colors might be either.

Korolev's mastery of color and strokes gives us movement in a static image, in the same way that our well rehearsed memories give us an illusion of having moved when we are all just standing still.