Painting Montenegro, artist Yegor Dulin

• Artist: Yegor Dulin
• Title: "Montenegro"
• Year: 2026
• Size: 70 × 60 cm
• Materials: oil on stretched canvas
• Original hand-painted artwork

Before the viewer lies an evening stretch of the Adriatic coast in Montenegro. On the right, a pale waterfront path runs diagonally into the depth along a low wall, and above it pines with curving trunks and dark crowns lean towards the water. On the left spreads the calm surface of the bay, beyond which rises a mass of blue mountain whose summit meets a pink sunset sky. Along the far shore the lights of a village are scattered in orange and yellow dots, as if reflected in the water. In the left foreground, bushes with pink and lilac flowers bloom in half-shadow. The composition is built on opposing diagonals: the path leads the eye to the lights, and the tilt of the pines brings it back to the mountains.

The painting is done in Dulin's recognisable plein-air manner: thick impasto strokes of palette knife and brush, large planes of colour and free drawing. The mountain and sky are laid in with broad strokes through which the canvas texture shows here and there; the pine crowns are modelled as dense dark green masses with sharp orange touches of branches lit by the last rays. The path and the wall are assembled from short slanting slabs of grey-blue and lilac paint. The flowers in the foreground are rendered as raised patches of colour with almost no drawing. The artist's signature is barely visible in the lower right corner.

The heart of the colour scheme is the pairing of deep ultramarine blue with soft pink. Blue fills the mountains, water and shadows, pink lives in the sky and flares up in the flowers, and between them burn warm orange lights. It is that brief moment after sunset when the air turns lilac, the heat recedes and the promenade empties. The mood is calm and dreamy, with a taste of a summer holiday by the sea.

Yegor Dulin is a Ukrainian artist, a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine and a graduate of the Kharkiv academic school. His works are held in private collections in Ukraine, Australia, the USA, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Canada and other countries. In 2024 his painting "The Alps" appeared on screen in the film "12", shot by Warner Bros studio in California.

At 70 × 60 cm this is a versatile medium format: the painting looks good above a sofa or a headboard, on a living-room pier wall, in a hallway or on a landing. The blue and pink palette creates a sense of coolness and space, so the canvas suits a bedroom, a lounge and interiors in light, grey or sand tones. "Montenegro" is a lovely gift for a woman or a man who loves the sea and travel and remembers summer evenings on the Adriatic.