Valeria Privalikhina, Still Life With an Apple, 2019 
Oil on canvas, 40 × 50 cm (15.7 × 19.7 inches) 
© Valeria Privalikhina 
 
“For a year I worked on my diploma project dedicated to Claude Monet, hardly leaving the studio other than for a field trip to France. This simple coffee mug and an apple were my usual companions during all this time, so I decided to paint them as a memory of time and space. Unassuming, fragmentary, and irregular, this still life for me became a metaphor for human existence.” —Valeria Privalikhina