Van Gogh's Irises is one of my favourite paintings. They are bold bellows of unapologetically blue joy emerging from and collaborating with green entanglement. He’s nailed them in a perfect composition. This work was my entry point in 2023 after a long period of illness and involuntary abstinence from painting.

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Van Gogh completed Irises a month after his admission to at the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum in May 1889, painting in the hospital garden. For him, painting served as sustenance to keep him alive through some pretty tough times. He described painting as "the lightning conductor for my illness", and felt that he could keep himself from going insane by continuing to paint. Hauntingly, he died by suicide the year after Irises was completed.

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Exhibition details here.