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The presented picture is accomplished in an expressive manner with thick strokes characteristic of Oleg Golosiy. The artist has always worked impulsively, sweepingly and quickly, using several brushes and erasing their fleece to the roots, that is why his works often seem vague and ephemeral, like flickering visions. Since 1991, having become interested in classical black-and-white films, Golosiy began using almost monochrome solutions. The painting “The Elephant and the Sun” shows us white glares of the dazzling shine standing out against a background of dark color: such a gray-white ‘day’ seems mysterious and mystical.
Oleg Golosiy depicts an elephant, happily splashing in the reflection of the sun by the sea. The sun looks a bit surprised, but it's a glad meeting – elephant gently stretches his trunk, wanting to hug it. They are surrounded by swirling waves reaching the horizon. The elephant was the artist’s alter ego, so he called himself, and after him all his friends. Therefore, it is a very personal motive for his work. Golosiy gives the elephant a human image: high forehead, chin. The picture can be called a part of a cycle in which a full-fledged story unfolds: “White elephants” in the light of candles listen to the lines of Scripture, in the work “Noah and the elephants” they intertwine their trunks in the darkness of the ark under the dim light of the lamp. In these paintings, the light has a symbolic meaning, which is fully revealed in the given picture, where in the renewed world the supreme source of Light, embodied in the Sun, itself ‘descends’ to the elephant.
The painting erases the boundaries between the personal feelings of the artist and the universal cultural experience. The plot reminds simultaneously a fairy tale and an ancient parable, it combines light irony and wisdom of millenniums. Such was Oleg himself: according to the memories of his friends, his sincere childish laughter suddenly could change into the spark of incomprehensible ‘superhuman’ sadness in the depths of his eyes, that could in a moment again give way to laughter. V
