September in the Moscow area

A dense stand of slender birches and aspens, their trunks painted as dark vertical strokes, fills most of the canvas, opening onto a pale strip of sky at the upper right. A small solitary figure in a red coat walks along a grassy path at the base of the trees, dwarfed by the surrounding foliage.

The canvas is worked almost entirely with a palette knife, laying down thick ridges of green, teal and gold that suggest sunlit leaves without describing individual forms. The single note of red against the cool green mass draws the eye immediately, and the heavy, tactile paint surface gives the autumn woodland a vivid, immersive energy.