Artwork title : The Guard of the Forest Mystery

This painting depicts not just a scene from a still life – before us is a small story, almost like a moment from a folk tale or children’s fantasy. A black bird, probably a raven or a rook, sits among objects that seem to have come out of an old forest corner: a wooden mortar with a pestle, mushrooms with velvety caps and bright forest berries. It’s not just a bird, but a guardian or observer, as if it froze for a moment before dive back into its crow’s affairs. The paints are thick, confident, the strokes are energetic and lively – there is a feeling that all this was not decomposed on purpose, but found by accident, as if someone left these things in the clearing and moved away. There is something almost theatrical in this composition: as if the bird is a character of the play, which is in the centre of the stage among the symbols of village life and forest life. Perhaps she knows something, hides something – it’s a raven, a keeper of secrets, a storyteller and a prankster at the same time. The picture tells of silence and a careful look at the ordinary. About how even simple things – a mushroom, a mortar, a bird – can suddenly become part of a magical story if you look at them differently. This is a story about how nature and man are connected by invisible threads, and how easy it is to feel them if you just stop and look.