Bouquets

By Knar Hovakimyan

November Bouquet, oil on canvas, 30x40in

Art is not what happens between the paintbrush and the canvas.

The artistic act is in the perception and reimagination of the surrounding world.

Although my abstract work is largely improvised, the process is very structured.
There is a concrete way that an image

-- a bouquet of flowers for instance -- is translated to the canvas.

And if the painting is a translation, then each new idea is a language that I’m translating the world into.

That language is what I think of as art.

The language I use for a given series of paintings is a combination of my identity and my circumstances.

For this particular series, I have been lost in a confusing nostalgia for a familiar but forgotten history.

Superbloom, oil on canvas, 10x12in

Overripe, oil on canvas, 9x10in

November Bouquet (detail), oil on canvas, 30x40in

November Bouquet (detail), oil on canvas, 30x40in

Apricot, oil on canvas, 12x14in

Apricot (detail), oil on canvas, 12x14in

Knar Hovakimyan is an artist, born in Armenia, raised in Los Angeles, and currently residing in Boston. She grew up in a community of Armenian immigrant artists and studied art with them, both formally and casually. When she's not painting colorful abstract works, she's painting portraits.

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This work appears in Khabar Keslan Issue 0. MEDIUM.