Calm Before the Storm - Nikolay Dubovsky

Calm Before the Storm by Nikolay Dubovsky feels less like a depiction of weather and more like a meditation on emotional silence before upheaval. While there are dark clouds and a churning sea, it feels less like a painting of weather and more like a contemplation of the emotional stillness of the time preceding an event, or change. Everything appears to be pausing, held back by the dense, oppressive clouds and reflected on the grey sea, and the air in the composition is one of holding its breath. Nothing actually happens but something clearly is coming. That ambiguity of what lies just beyond the composition provides it with its psychic resonance. The image feels like a state of being-waiting, rather than an active event. The work speaks to me of the balance between stillness and transition. The water may refer to our state of mind – composed but unsettled, while the gathering storm represents doubt, apprehension, the anticipation of unavoidable change which is on its way from across the water. The painting does not involve any action in the physical sense but rather expresses a psychological atmosphere that allows the viewer to enter into an emotional state. The vastness of the landscape, and emptiness, places the viewer in a submissive relation to the indifferent power of nature, but there is also a stillness and quietude here which comes not so much from fear, but from the potential for something significant to occur-it implies the significance and emotional weight of periods of anticipation-before a decision, argument or an announcement.