Flow

Painting the Flow

“The Glorious Art of Aazam Irilian” by Dr. Betty Ann Brown, art historian, critic, and curator 

“If you are quiet enough, you will hear the flow of the universe. You will feel its rhythm. Go with this flow. Happiness lies ahead.” – The Buddha

Aazam Irilian allows paint to flow across her canvases in elegant chromatic fields that suggest water, waves, and cosmic nebula. Her paintings are abstract, but they inspire viewers to engage in Pareidolia, the psychological tendency to see meaningful shapes in ambiguous visual patterns. (Do you see the horse in that cloud? Doesn’t that coastline remind you of an old man’s profile?) 

The paintings bear witness to the artist’s process: her immersion in what Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the flow. Fascinated by people–especially artists–who became so involved in an activity that nothing else seemed to matter, Csikszentmihalyi analyzed the flow experience as an altered state based on total collaboration with what shows up. For Irilian, “what shows up” is the nature of paint, its viscosity, texture, and malleability. She pours watery pigment over the canvas, allowing it to flow into pictorial existence. Then she layers the paint with salt and other minerals dissolved in liquid and allowed to dry in lacey chemical patterns. Both of her materials–the paint and the salts–flow spatially. And Irilian’s mindful concentration on her process evokes the flow experience.”