Аркадий Ескин

 of a blue sky, a colour which can be seen no- where else on earth. He likes depicting a pond, a river. The white willow over the water, the old poplar, the yellow water-lily, that dark blot of a pool… Yeskin’s water can be coloured pearl-grey-rose or pale moon, white. It reflects shores covered with overgrown vegetation or a boundless sky. It sparkles in the sun or jingles with rain drops. And this feeling of silence: velvety, enveloping you tenderly on a warm evening or when it’s sticky, heat-heavy at noon in summer, or divine, of blue transparence in the morning in October. If the artist depicts children or women by the river you just feel like screwing up your eyes from those bright streams of light, those sun patches which make everything dissolve and flow. Shape and volume lose their clearness, the contours disappear, the surrounding world becomes transparent and volatile, almost unma- terial, but surprisingly exact with the feelings which it imparts. Yeskin depicts the “impression”. It is his very own way of perceiving the world. The way how quickly, with what temperament and desire, with what vehemence and daring Arkady creates his studies — all this lets him preserve that con- densed experience of a momentary impression, carry it on to the spectator and make him, his spectator, experience the same ardour of feeling. The secret of Yeskin’s painting resides in itself. He has strict principles of his own, which he per- fects and thoroughly sticks to, because fundamen- tally it is these principles that are expressed in his artistic language, so individual in his perception of the world. There is a stable sum of signs which make it easy to recognize his works, to single them out among others, to remember them for