Blue Irises at Night

This painting, Blue Irises at Night, felt like a giant dangerous experiment at the time. I show strokes of the brush—isolated, single strokes for that matter, bold as calligraphy. Abandoning my perfect ordered color fields within stripes. Instead, using the almighty ‘black’ which can destroy a painting with its powerful pigment.

In the end, I’m proud of the alternating grey-blues, one light then one medium. With the bottom one a little greyer—surprising the eye when it descends the canvas. Like a discordant guitar chord concluding a song, or a darker color as a sort of omen to the advancing night.

Irises are one of my favorite flowers and I’m always captivated that they have such a short bloom cycle. They seem almost mystical in their shape, like apostles in the garden. The idea of these flowers blooming at night is very inspiring for me—one of those beautiful secret moments of nature that seem obscenely personal.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus