Painting Caramel Evening of the Sura, artist Igor Zaitsev

• Artist: Igor Zaitsev
• Title: "Caramel Evening of the Sura"
• Year: 2025
• Size: 60 × 40 cm
• Materials: oil on canvas
• Original hand-painted artwork

"Caramel Evening of the Sura" is a horizontal landscape painted almost on the verge of abstraction. The central part of the canvas is occupied by two large masses of trees: on the left a tall green crown with a dark trunk, on the right a rounded grey-blue one. Between and beneath them are dark bushes in which orange, red and golden patches flare up like the last rays of the setting sun. Along the bottom runs a broad light band of lilac-blue that can be read as water or a sunlit bank, and above the trees opens a light sky with warm pink and sandy strokes. At the upper left a separate cloud or crown shows dark, while the right edge of the canvas flashes red.

The work is painted in oils in a free, expressive manner. The artist does not draw details but builds the landscape from broad, flat strokes and planes of colour laid on confidently and densely, in places with a visible brush texture. The outlines of the crowns are emphasised with thin red and orange lines that separate the forms and give the image tension. The observed motif turns into a rhythm of colour patches, and the mood is conveyed above all through colour. The artist's signature and the date "25" are in the lower left corner.

The colour scheme combines muted and warm tones: grey-green, turquoise, dove-blue and lilac, with caramel, ochre, orange and red accents. The pale pinkish-beige sky and the lilac band below soften the painting, while dark violet-blue patches in the centre give it depth. The atmosphere is that of a warm summer evening, when the air turns thick and golden and the outlines of things dissolve into colour.

Igor Zaitsev is a Ukrainian painter, a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2017, who lives and works in Dnipro. His main genres are landscape, still life and portrait, and he developed as an artist through creative contact with Petro Mahro, Yevhen Nehoda and Fedir Pavlenko. He moves from direct observation of nature to its emotional and colouristic transformation, in which colour and form become independent carriers of emotional content.

The horizontal 60 × 40 cm format looks good above a sofa or chest of drawers in a living room, in a study or in an office. The restrained yet warm palette suits contemporary interiors with natural materials and grey or beige walls. The painting will make a fine gift for a lover of contemporary painting — a man, a colleague or a business partner.