SOPHY NAESS

SOPHY NAESS

  • Sophy Naess Supporters' Circle
  • MY GREEN AGE
  • Sometimes I go about in pity for myself and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky
  • Paintings Spring 2022
  • Dramas of Adjustment
  • Paintings Spring 2021
  • Nut Island
  • Floating World Revisited
  • The Tapestry of the Apocalypse
  • Chaos and Classicism
  • All the Things You Are
  • Labor of Love
  • Weavers Discourse
  • Chateau D'Eau
  • Bio
Lilacs
May 2016

The May scarf is a silkscreen print of people in a lilac bush, inspired by an experience on LSD in the north of Sweden.


I first appreciated lilacs when I lived in that land. Their appearance in spring came at the end of a traumatic period of darkness and announced the return of the pleasure of fragrant flowers, etc etc. It is such a robust bush! But I felt there was no way I could enjoy lilacs enough in the time allotted, and for this reason they caused me anxiety at the same time as pleasure. I could only hope to live for more springs to enjoy them more. But a long and deadening winter would come first.


The last couple of summers I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel and thus extend the lilac season. I have enjoyed them in New York in May, in Sweden in July. Now on June 1st I find myself in Saguache, Colorado, at an elevation of 7,680 feet, and I’ve never seen more lilac bushes in one place.