September

This painting, September, was a breakthrough for me in creating stripes that alternated two sets of color. Repetitive green stripes, alternating with varying brown-to-yellow stripes. This was markedly more complex than the painting which preceded it, which was an exercise in repetition and restraint.  

I was trying to capture the different time periods of September in one painting, where earlier in the month the trees are green. While toward the end of the month, the trees begin to turn brown and yellow, and thus capture this smoldering-of-light effect. The juxtaposition of the time lapse, and the visual tension of two different tonalities excited me and scared me while I was painting it. The brown stripes created illusions of background light, while the green stripes were evenly solid.  I was beginning to play with depth and surface juxtaposed against flatness. A sort of visual game that spoke about the changing temperament of autumn.

–STELIOS author of The Oculus