Apollo

In my yearning to complexify and intensify my artistic “voice”, I undertook this painting as a metaphor for my youngest dog, Apollo. He is an alert, adventurous, innocent, joyful, and mostly black Shiba-Inu with markings of tan and white.  Truly a study of random motion. In the painting, I was experimenting with juxtaposing bands that were an amalgam of his colors. A busy rush of black, tan and white. With another band which had more ‘perspective’ where you could observe a broken, and breaking, stream of color across a black field. Imitating my canine’s erratic trails of movement. 

I was conscious of crushing the colors together without blending them, while keeping them dense and rushed. Ironically, I find the color palette very formal and high art. Which belies the informality of this very sprightly dog, who runs like an atom, at the age of two…An incarnation of energy, joy and youth.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus