Bee

After a considerable absence from the studio, I decided to tackle a third series of paintings around this idea I called ‘The Current’. All in all, signifying something moving, faster, turning, rushed. I think that after my second series ‘Glamour’ I was ready to be more intense. Add color layers, and explore real depth (i.e., paint thickness)—not illusive depth. I continued to emphasize brush gesture, by deploying different angles and application of the brush. Dragging the paint, angling the brush, using the brush tip, applying more than blending. Enter, Bee.

I always admired bees for how they expressed a range of energy. For me, they bring a sense of repose as much as they bring a sense of agitation. In the early summer, my dog, Zöé, and I would sit on the patio and take in our lush garden of marguerites and black eyed susans–ordinary American wildflowers. We’d intensely observe the bees lazily migrate, from flower to flower. Then sometimes they would rush off in a straight line somewhere out of view. The hot sun, the yellow and black flowers, the yellow and black bees—even my little Zoe is a sort of sable and black—all meshed together in my new painting Bee.

I could feel the current beginning to move. 

–STELIOS author of The Oculus