Painting Ridges of Madness, artist Oleksandr Yatsenko

• Artist: Oleksandr Yatsenko
• Title: "Ridges of Madness"
• Year: 2025
• Size: 60 × 115 cm
• Materials: oil on canvas
• Original hand-painted artwork

"Ridges of Madness" is a narrow vertical canvas entirely filled with abstract painted relief. Dark mauve and burgundy masses twist across the whole surface, resembling mountain ridges seen from above, veins of marble or branches of coral. Between them lie lighter areas of pale pink, lilac and peach, their edges trimmed with turquoise and emerald. Just left of centre flares a warm patch of orange, yellow and white — the only truly hot spot, like a fire deep in a gorge. The composition has no single centre: the eye travels along the winding lines from top to bottom and back again, losing itself in a labyrinth of forms — hence the sense of vertigo suggested by the title.

The work is painted in oil on canvas, thickly and with heavy impasto. The paint is laid in dense strokes and layers, and the surface clearly shows ridges, curls and sharp peaks of paint left by the brush. The colours are hardly mixed on the palette — they are placed side by side, touching and partly overlapping one another, so every area of the canvas vibrates with the closeness of contrasting shades. The thick relief creates real shadows and highlights on the painting, and its surface changes as the light changes. Up close the work feels like living matter, while from a distance it comes together into a single pattern resembling a map of some unknown mountain land.

The palette is rich and contrasting: mauve, plum, crimson, purple and dark blue sit alongside soft pink, peach, turquoise and mint. Warm orange and yellow accents enliven the generally cool colour scheme. The mood of the work is restless, hypnotic and energetic: the painting seems to be in constant motion and does not let the eye go. The dark mauve masses lend weight and depth, the light pinkish, pearly areas bring in air, and the thin turquoise rim along their borders works like a glow, separating one form from another.

Oleksandr Yatsenko is a contemporary Ukrainian painter, born in 1980 in Cherkasy, who lives and works in Kyiv and graduated from the painting faculty of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. His work includes abstract compositions and fantastic landscapes, with natural forms transformed into complex decorative structures. One of the strengths of his painting is a dense, relief-like texture with a pronounced character of brushwork. In "Ridges of Madness" this quality is especially evident: the relief of the paint becomes the painting's main means of expression.

The elongated vertical 60 × 115 cm format fits neatly into the space between windows, a niche, a hallway or next to a bookcase. The painting looks good in a study, library, bedroom or living room — especially in interiors with dark walls, velvet furniture and textiles in fuchsia, emerald or teal, where its rich colours sound especially vivid. On a light wall it becomes a bold splash of colour. The work will make a good gift for a man or a woman who loves expressive abstract painting with a striking texture.