August lillies 1995

Elena Bontea painted ‘August Lillies’ with what looks like some kind of acrylic on board, but that doesn’t really matter - it’s more about the feeling, and the making. There’s something so refreshing about the way this composition just appeared, like a garden flourishing by accident. I love how each of the marks seems to be made from the wrist. The paint is applied in thin layers. Some strokes are transparent, some are opaque. The artist has clearly let go of perfection, and embraced a more casual approach to capturing the beauty of these flowers. Check out the flower in the upper left corner; the way the green stem fades into the background is a perfect example of how Bontea allows the paint to guide the image. It reminds me a little of the botanical paintings of Ernst Haeckel, but with a looser, more intuitive feel.