In 17th Winter, Self Portrait, Valeriya Veron looks at herself at the very beginning of everything. Painted at seventeen, the same year as Self Portrait with Brushes, this intimate work reveals a young artist already possessed of a searching, serious gaze that belies her age. She faces the viewer directly, wrapped in a white headscarf and a fur-trimmed coat, the cold of winter present in every fold of fabric and every warm flush of her cheek. Her dark eyes hold the viewer without apology or performance. They are already the eyes of someone who has decided to see clearly and to paint what she finds.
Valeriya Veron works the small 13″ x 8″ cardboard surface in oils with a freshness and directness that feels entirely unself-conscious. The brushwork is loose and confident, the warm ochres and roses of the face pushed against the cooler whites of the scarf and the soft, textured fur at her collar. The background dissolves into warm, atmospheric strokes that frame the face without competing with it. 17th Winter, Self Portrait is a document of an artistic life at its very first chapter, a young woman in the cold, looking inward and outward at once, already holding a brush and already knowing why.