At Sunset

by Mia · Moscow, RU

At Sunset, 2025, canvas, oil, 30*40 cm. Quiet magic descends on the forest edge when the sun, drowning in crimson rays, paints the clearing in fiery red tones. At this hour, the border between reality and a fairy tale becomes thinner - and now the hut on chicken legs, emphasized by the bright sunset, creaking and swaying, takes sweeping steps, as if in a hurry or, on the contrary, returning from very important secret affairs. The viewer does not know: something has ended or something is about to begin, he is in uncertainty. Its door is wide open, and a warm, almost living yellow light pours from inside - either Baba Yaga is cooking a potion in a cast-iron pot, or is preparing to leave, because her mortar and broom are left nearby. The foreground is like the altar of a forgotten cult: a pile of skulls with shimmering their eye sockets whisper unintelligible warnings, they are clearly silent witnesses of ancient rites. A mortar has frozen nearby, with a broom placed in it, and on the mortar, black as the night itself, sits a raven like a sentinel of Baba Yaga, watching what is happening in the forest... His shining gaze is fixed on the viewer and it seems as if he sees and knows what is inaccessible to us and hints to us that we are superfluous here. The air trembles with hints of witchcraft: here a shadow flashed in the dark firs, there is a rustle in the grass, and in the distance, through the crimson twilight, it seems to hear laughter... or a sigh? The picture does not simply depict a fairy-tale plot - it immerses you in that very moment when reality wavers, and the viewer is no longer sure: has the action begun or is the fairy tale already over...? This is not just a landscape. This is a door to a world where huts walk, skulls they are whispering, and Baba Yaga is somewhere very close...