“Calla Lilies and Glasses” (2026)Oil painting by Nikifor Swiristuhin

I titled this work “Calla Lilies and Glasses” because it was born from the collision of two states — silence and noise.

I painted the calla lilies not as flowers, but as figures. To me, they are almost human: leaning, listening, slightly tired. Their white petals are pauses, breaths between words. I deliberately made them large, almost looming, so they would dominate the space, like thoughts you cannot push away.

The glasses at the bottom are something else entirely. They are life bubbling, clinking, spilling over. In them there is evening, conversation, laughter, perhaps loneliness disguised as toasts. They seem unstable, as if they are about to tip over, and that matters to me: the fragility of a moment is always more honest than its solemnity.

I applied the colors sharply, without sparing the canvas. Red as tension, blue as depth, green as an attempt to cling to what is alive. I did not strive for purity of form; I wanted everything to drift slightly, like after the second glass, when the world becomes more candid.

This painting is about contrast. About how elegance and chaos, silence and noise, flowers and alcohol can exist side by side. And perhaps about a man standing between them, trying to understand where he himself belongs in all of this.

Materials used:

Oil paints.

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 140 x 200 x 0.2cm (unframed) / 140 x 200cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: Still life

Tags: