2019 BRIAN WILLMONT
Brian Willmont is known for the icy-cool, crisply delineated, meticulously airbrushed paintings that he makes using elaborate stencils. The two works Willmont made for Flora depict poppies—a favorite motif of his and one that’s especially poignant given America’s current opioid crisis. The wavelike effects he uses mimic Photoshop distortion filters, and the lush purple, blue, and amber gradients with which he fills his poppy flower silhouettes suggest retro-futurist sunglass tints or, more pointedly, the colors of prescription opioid pills.
Willmont’s poppy waveforms are as far removed from the natural world as can be, yet they still manage to simulate the feeling of wind, sky, and waves. These are beautiful paintings. They transfix us, hypnotize us, lull us into a dreamlike state with their softly undulating motion. Their forms feel hazy, despite being hard-edged. Their colors feel simultaneously translucent and opaque. Their seductive beauty washes over us in soft, cool waves. And the semi-soothing, semi-woozy narcotic effects they produce live up to the poppy flower image — a perfect unity of form and content.