As If You Were Here

Oil on canvas · 60 × 30 cm – Bali, Indonesia, 2026

This work fuses what geography separated: the cat that stayed in Russia and the blossoming tree of Bali. The flower crown is not tropical decoration: It is the climate I owed her and could not give her. To paint here is to complete a gesture that life left unfinished.

This is not only about nostalgia. It is about what exile does to bonds: one reaches the imagined life and discovers that the being for whom that life was dreamed is missing. The painting does not bring the cat back. It does the only possible thing: It finally gives her the open air.