Flowers in white vase 1956

David Burliuk made this painting of flowers in a white vase, sometime probably around 1956, using oils on canvas. It’s like he was wrestling with the paint, throwing down these thick strokes of blues and greens. It’s almost overwhelming, but that’s where the life is, right? There's this one little patch, right in the middle, where he’s layered the paint so thick you could almost pick it off. It’s a little chaotic, but there’s something about that struggle that feels really human. You can almost feel him figuring out what he was doing as he went along. The colours are bold, even jarring – the blues are icy, and the greens are almost acidic, but they make those reds and yellows pop. Burliuk reminds me a bit of some of the German Expressionists, like Emil Nolde. But while Nolde goes for drama, Burliuk is more like a friendly hug that’s a little too tight. He knows art is an exchange, a back and forth, a conversation that never really ends.