Vanya in a frame

130 × 45.5 cm

watercolour paper, office printer

the frame was once intended for the storage of Chinese painting

Gardeners say that one should talk to flowers: about the weather, nature, football. Sometimes about the problems of snow removal and the regional peculiarities of one’s own speech (Muscovites pronounce their o’s like a’s, children laugh, and our dog barks very loudly, though only on Tuesdays). Conversations while working are never superfluous: lunchtime is already over, but the abstract image of speaking has not yet had time to dissipate into the air. Grandfather’s tobacco has ripened behind the veranda, so in a month we are in for a cloud of smoke together with the clicking of the leaves of the common touch-me-not.

The flowers are outside, while I am inside: it looks at me as though I had already been forcing it to press itself against the glass for an hour (which, in fact, is true). It is very difficult to be the younger brother of an unsuccessful photographer: yesterday he had to arrange toy soldiers in the garden, and this morning he was dragged out of bed by requests to shine a flashlight in the attic. He ought to spend more time studying German letters and preparing for mathematics olympiads, but when an older sister appears in the house, something has to be sacrificed.