Acacia by the Creek at Sunset

Since I was mostly painting after school hours, the earliest I could set up my easel outside the village was about four in the afternoon. This often meant I would catch the sunset and wind up redoing previously applied colors to capture that ephemeral light. Sometimes I finished painting in the dusk or continued from memory under electrical light in my room at the empty dormitory.

If a landscape I painted in Yaroshivka is lit brightly by the midday sun, it’s a safe bet I did it on a Sunday. Saturdays in Soviet schools counted as regular weekdays, too.