About the Work

In The Four Harbingers, four figures take shape within a field of intersecting lines and accumulated paint. Their bodies become discernible, then partially recede beneath further layers. Across a canvas nearly four metres wide, recognition remains unsettled: the eye follows a contour, loses it at an intersection and discovers its continuation elsewhere.

The painting refers directly to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Created in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it emerged amid the disruption of familiar certainties. The artist recalls that the anxiety of this period was accompanied by apprehension about the growing threat of war. The choice of “harbingers” expressed a wish to leave the outcome open: a warning might still be heard, and events might still take another course.

The four figures were present in the conception from the outset. Their material formation followed a sequence central to Sushelnytska’s method: point, line, patch, body. Small marks accumulated into areas of density, giving the figures substance and definition. Photographs taken midway through the process record a stage at which their silhouettes stand out particularly clearly. Further layering gradually draws them into the surrounding field. The same accumulation that gives the bodies form also makes them harder to distinguish.

Process and Surface

Begun outdoors and subsequently developed in the studio, the painting was worked on in both vertical and horizontal positions. These changes altered the relationship between bodily movement, flowing paint and gravity. Long trajectories cross compact clusters of marks; abrupt turns interrupt extended gestures. The artist describes the forceful application of paint as a kind of torn writing.

At close range, the surface appears woven from painterly script. Densely arranged, winding lines form an intricate network crossed by longer trajectories of paint. Loops, turns and narrow intervals give each passage its own rhythm. The breadth of the sweeping gesture coexists with the meticulous articulation of small areas.

The raised acrylic traces give this interplay a physical dimension. Light catches their edges and reveals their thickness, intersections and small shadows. From a distance, the viewer follows the relationships between the figures; close up, attention shifts to the individual paths of paint. Moving between these distances changes how the image is read.

Historical and Cultural Context

The painting can be situated at the intersection of apocalyptic imagery, gestural painting and the pictorial exploration of writing.

Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Horsemen (1498) offers a historical point of comparison. Its overlapping bodies and forceful diagonal movement give catastrophe a visible, advancing form. In The Four Harbingers, the biblical reference persists while the figures’ legibility becomes unstable within the density of the painted field. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The movement of liquid paint invites comparison with Jackson Pollock’s practice, in which a painted trajectory registers bodily action and the behaviour of the material. In Sushelnytska’s work, that relationship unfolds around four intended figures whose contours are repeatedly crossed and partially obscured. The Museum of Modern Art

The artist’s description of “torn writing” also offers a point of contact with Cy Twombly’s exploration of gesture, drawing and script. In The Four Harbingers, this affinity lies in the rhythm of loops, interruptions and overlapping traces through which a mark acquires the urgency of an inscription. The Museum of Modern Art

Seen after 2020, the painting carries associations that subsequent events have intensified. Yet the uncertainty of its making remains essential to its meaning. The figures emerge and withdraw; the warning remains open to interpretation. Their incomplete visibility sustains the question held within the title: what can still change once a threat has been perceived?

Exhibition History

Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa, Ukraine
International Cultural Center UNION, Odesa, Ukraine
Victory Gardens Art Gallery, Odesa, Ukraine

Artwork Information

A unique original painting. Its layered relief and individual paint trajectories are integral to the physical work.

The painting is currently unstretched and stored rolled.

For acquisition enquiries and further information, please contact the artist’s studio by email, quoting The Four Harbingers.

The Artist at Work

Iryna Sushelnytska working on The Four Harbingers during its outdoor stage, 2020.