Irises

A dense bed of irises crowds the canvas, their blue-violet blooms and twisting green blades pressing forward, a single white iris standing apart among them. Van Gogh painted them in the garden of the asylum at Saint-Remy soon after he arrived, finding solace and intensity in the close study of growing things. Now at the Getty, Irises blazes with vivid color and restless, curling line, each flower individual and alive. Far from melancholy, it brims with the energy of nature - the troubled painter losing himself, and finding steadiness, in a flowerbed.