Floral Eyes 1966

Eileen Agar, made this painting “Floral Eyes” with oil on board, and it is the kind of painting where you can see the artist thinking through the medium. It’s not labored, but it’s very deliberate, like Agar is speaking to herself through the painting. There's an area on the left side with a brown eye, that has a distinct sense of a face, but the painting as a whole is an attempt to create a new way of seeing. Agar is pushing us to look beyond the literal, messing with our expectations, and hinting at a deeper meaning. There's a beautiful tension in the colour palette, with the vivid blue contrasting with the muted brown, and the flatness of the paint gives it a raw, almost naive quality. In some ways, it reminds me of a Lee Krasner painting, someone interested in Surrealism and a commitment to painting as a process. Ultimately, “Floral Eyes” is a reminder that art is an ongoing dialogue, where ideas are exchanged and reinterpreted across generations.