Bright flowers 1942

Martiros Sarian made this painting of bright flowers with oils, probably sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Can you feel how the painting emerged, shift by shift, through trial, error, and intuition? I can really sympathize with Sarian, standing in front of these flowers, thinking, “Okay, how do I capture this?” The paint is applied pretty thickly, giving it this great tactile presence. Look at those strokes of yellow and red, and how they give the flowers so much life. There is this one gesture, a quick dab of red, it feels like it really communicates the energy that Sarian was feeling. Sarian’s work always struck me for how he captured the world with such vibrancy, not so different from other painters like Emil Nolde, maybe? In the end, artists are in this ongoing conversation, inspiring each other across time. Painting really is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple meanings.