Icons, gems and abstraction: The series

Icons, gems and abstraction: The Rilska series

CYB — June 2017

The Rilska series was born during my trip to Bulgaria in December 2016. Invited by gallerist Vesselina Sarieva in Plovdiv, I visited the monastery of Saint John of Rila, in the mountains.

The Bulgarian Orthodox icons left a profound impression on me: the golds, the reds, the deep greens of the frames, the grave and luminous faces of the saints.

In this series I wanted to rediscover that chromatic density, that intense presence of colour as precious material — gems, stones, golds. The icon is a concentrate of light and meaning, just as abstract painting can be when it reaches that density.

The green and red frames found in my Rilska canvases are a direct echo of those icon frames, transposed into the language of Abstract Baroque.