Surf at Quansoo

My second painting, Surf at Quansoo, was a struggle in creation, correction, chaos and resolution. I thought to myself: “Welcome to the art of painting: sometimes a wrestling match, sometimes a dance, sometimes a walk or sometimes a flight so exhilarating it is lyrical.”

This painting started out as a series of twelve stripes of my “favorite color”, blue. The first version was a corny painting of blue stripes in sweet and predictable pretty blues. I shuddered at the thought that this was “me”. I felt like I put on the wrong clothes that day.

Then I injected anger and struggle into the color with greys and whites, and was conscious I was twisting the way I saw the color blue, and started mentally tapping into experiences, such as walking into the ocean surf on a partly cloudy day. Should life be so comfortable?

The painting ended up being imperfectly gestural, a variety of blues struggling to co-exist, echoing allusions to clouds, sea-foam, bright sky, impending storm and lurking melancholy. The die was cast.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus