This painting is a playful meditation on a beautiful, cylindrical theatre in Paris called Le Cirque d’Hiver, on rue Amelot in the 11th arrondisement. This low-roofed dome theatre is an oval polygon of 20 sides. Thus inspiring my vertical stripes and the curved motif at the bottom of the painting. The theatre combines planes of camel and gray–which I invoke in the painting. Also, a piece of architecture I abstracted into stripes (subliminally, I might add).

The composition makes some vague reference to theatre curtains in a playful way. Using visible, rushed brush strokes with some blending. I also like the subject of this painting, as it is the title of a poem from one of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Bishop. Again, the contrast of “winter” and “circus”, something cold and playful, is a phenomenon of co-existing opposites that I always love to visually (and intellectually) explore.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus