Frosty Day (Panorama of Borisov)

Everyone sees winter here. I see time. These rooftops are decades old, and they remember what the people living beneath them have forgotten. The water tower on the horizon stands like a sentinel, emanating a sense of silent watch.

I painted this view from the upper floor — and the most difficult part was not to over-detail. I wanted to render every house, every fence, every tree. But I forced myself to stop halfway, because in a panoramic view, details interfere with the main element: the rhythm of rooftops that stretches from the foreground to the horizon almost like an ornament. The bluish cold of snow on the slopes is the only pure color; everything else is resolved in restrained gray-brown nuances.

Vilhelm Hammershøi, the Danish artist whom I deeply admire, could fill an empty room with such presence that one wanted to speak in whispers. I wanted to achieve the same — but not in an interior, but in an open space. Pastel and watercolor work together here: the watercolor underpainting provides depth, while the pastel stroke gives texture to the roofs and walls, that very roughness that makes winter tangible.

And beneath these rooftops, someone is now silent — as silent as this entire landscape.