<blockquote>Ludmila’s vision of “the place” seemed to have been etched deep into her consciousness as it continued to exert a supreme influence on her life. It was a place that appeared at once utterly real and completely imaginary, and she devoted her life to painting it. Each painting formed a discrete fragment of its landscape; yet taken as a whole, her oeuvre constructed an impossibly detailed and vivid sense of the spellbinding place that so clearly inhabited her mind.
Journalists never stopped asking her, “What do you call this place, Ludmila?” But her response, as well as the flustered and somewhat apologetic look on her face, were always the same: “There is a name for it, in my head, but it’s as if I can’t say it out loud.”</blockquote>
