Post edited 22/09/2026 for academic purposes.

Warflowers 2026. Water-soluble oils on 76x101cm canvas.

This is a re-used canvas, the dark green landscape area at the bottom being part of the original, which was probably in acrylics. It’s also quite large and a bit of a challenge in that regard. And I had no idea when I began leaving paint trails across it, what it would turn out to be. I was using a palette knife to make these great sweeps across the canvas above what’s quite a familiar horizon to me.

Then at some point the energy of those movements and their directionality came up against the conflagration in the Middle East; Israel having bombed Iran*, reportedly at the behest – or at least with the permission of – the White House, and Iran having retaliated. The diagonals became war planes, and the dark, quiet ground beneath the target of the flowering gun barrels. I’ve used orange colour paint sparingly because this is less about constructing an explicit painting of war than implying it by asking questions. The AR video is a little closer to the reality, but even that keeps the audio track well away from the sounds of explosions.

At the time of writing this update, the red, white, and blue is somewhat prescient given the USA’s continued involvement. I had not seen flags when I made the original paint marks, but now they seem obvious.

Both seem now to have involved other countries in the area. I continue to have no words for what’s happening, but my subsequent post still feels relevant. https://strayfisharts.com/2026/06/28/war-flowers-2/

*Specifically, a girls’ school, killing 65 children.

Warflowers

Guns don’t fire, they blossom.

In slow motion, the explosion emerges from the barrel like a flower in sunlight, a multilayered Amaryllis spreading its red, orange, and white petals and

spitting its silent, violent seeds towards the devastation they will inflict.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2026 updated 22/09/2026