Pink Night Sky, Vermilion Poppies Painting

1997, Anselm Kiefer made “Bohemia Lies by the Sea,” a very wide painting, about twenty feet across, of an expansive field of abstracted poppies. His painting was largely influenced by a poem of the same title by the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann. Among other themes, both the painting and the poem share a desire to return to a more perfect place in time — a magical utopia — all the while recognizing that such a return is physically impossible. Bohemia, after all, was a landlocked kingdom that could never literally lie by the sea. In Kiefer’s painting, the poppies are said to be symbols of dreams, sleep, and death, and they are also the flower for remembrance of military veterans. When I began making paintings based on memories of breathtaking vingettes and sunsets experienced on a trip to Yosemite National Park with a group of friends, the title of Kiefer’s painting and the theme of Bachmann’s poem kept creeping into my notes. I wanted this work to have the feeling of a sort of daydream, the kind you might have on a road trip as a passenger: your eyes are shut but the sun is seeping through and technicolor images float in and out with varying degrees of focus and blur. Regardless of will or want, there are perfect moments in time to which I know I can not return. In daydreams as in paintings, the rules are different. Pink Night Sky, Vermilion Poppies is a work on stretched canvas, and is wired and ready to hang.

Painting:Gouache on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:36 W x 60 H x 2 D in

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