In the City N

Look at the wheels. Not at the city behind them, not at the streetlights, not at the overcast sky — at the wheels. They lean against the railing as if waiting for someone who left and may never return. There's not a single person in this entire scene, and because of this it sounds louder than any crowd.

I was passing through this city — it seems like one day, maybe two. It was drizzling, and I went into a café across from this embankment. While waiting for my coffee, I took out my sketchbook and made a drawing. Later, back home, I returned to it and realized I didn't need colors. Gray-green, umber, a little ochre on the stone — that's enough. Color here would be a lie, because the mood of this place is muted, veiled like that rain.

I worked almost monochromatically, consciously limiting my palette to two or three pigments. The vase is rendered with washes, the buildings in the background are barely suggested — they exist as memory, not as fact. The entire foreground with the bicycles, on the contrary, is drawn graphically, with line — a contrast between the clarity of the near and the blur of the distant.

A city is not buildings. A city is the traces of those who lived in it.