Your eye goes straight up, to the top of the picture, where the colour stops belonging to anybody.
Two figures stand under the arch of the Manhattan Bridge. You never see their faces – Naomi cuts them off at the collarbone, so what you get instead is what is happening above their heads. Magenta, cobalt, gold, emerald, brushed loose and fast, growing straight out of them like weather.
The part you notice second
Look at the middle, where the two colour-fields meet. There is no seam. Each figure starts out with their own bloom, and somewhere overhead the two stop being two. You cannot point at the line where one person’s colour ends and the other’s begins – because there isn’t one. That is the whole picture. Two lives that quit being separate.
Naomi paints people like this on purpose. Thick black contour, deep warm skin, a flat New York ground with one city element and nothing else competing. She refuses to make anyone pose for you. You get their colour instead, which tells you more anyway.
Once it’s on your wall
It makes a room sound louder. Put it in a hallway, a first apartment, over a bed, at the top of the stairs – it does the same thing everywhere, which is make the space look like somebody confident lives there. Guests read it as a couple. Sisters read it as sisters. Nobody reads it as nothing.
Getting it there
Museum-grade archival matte paper, printed edge to edge with no white border, so the colour runs all the way out and nothing feels boxed in. Smooth and non-reflective – a lamp or a window opposite won’t bounce back at you. It arrives rolled in a tube, ready for a frame you already own, and it looks right pinned up bare too.
Portrait. The 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) is preselected and it’s what most people take, $49. The 11 x 14 is $29 if you’re grouping a few. The 18 x 24 is $69 for a wide, empty wall. Made to order, so nobody on your street has this one. Free shipping in the continental US.
One honest thing
It is loud. Saturated magenta and cobalt, no quiet corners. If your room is all soft neutrals and you want it to stay that way, this will argue.
If that sounds like your wall, take it home. If you’re still circling, look through the rest of Naomi’s BLOOM PROFILE work – or follow her, and you’ll see the next one before anyone else does.
One is a piece. Two is a set. Three is a collection.
Almost nobody stops at one. A second work by the same hand turns a wall into a pairing. A third turns it into something you chose rather than something you bought. There are 6 other works by Naomi Brooks available.
Tile Rising Ochre – Naomi Brooks | Digital Download$19
Weather Becoming Hers – Naomi Brooks | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
Tower Blooming Magenta – Naomi Brooks | Digital Download$19
Stride Blooming Cobalt – Naomi Brooks | Fine Art Print Price range: $29 through $69
Page Turning Quiet – Naomi Brooks | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
Wind Pulling Everything East – Naomi Brooks | Fine Art Print Price range: $129 through $229
