Mountain flowers 1967

Martiros Sarian made this painting, Mountain Flowers, using oil paint on canvas. You can really see Sarian working the paint, building up these little dabs of color into a wild bouquet. It’s all about the process here, the joy of pushing the paint around. The surface has so much texture, it feels like you could reach out and touch the petals, the leaves, the vase. The paint is pretty opaque, and in some spots, especially in the center of those yellow flowers, you can see how he’s layered colors on top of each other. There's this one little dab of red paint right in the middle of a yellow flower that just sings! It's like a tiny exclamation point. Sarian reminds me a bit of the Fauvist painters, like Matisse, with his bold use of color and loose brushwork. But there’s something so distinctly Armenian about his work, a warmth and a vibrancy that feels like home. It is a conversation across time and place and culture.