You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.

Alison Dougherty’s You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore. is a masterpiece of pure abstraction. The composition and expressive mark-making are so intricate that I could easily devote the rest of this critique purely to technical analysis. However, I will try to refrain from delving too far into Dougherty’s painterly achievements in favor of the universal feelings they express.

The present work's title, the whirlwind of passionate colors consuming its surface, and its expressive brushstrokes communicate that feeling of ambiguous disappointment that often walks hand in hand with love. In matters of the heart, some of us set our expectations too low while others set them too high (while it is impossible to know for sure, I think the scale tends to lean towards low). Regardless of our expectations, it is all too common for a partner to disappoint.

You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.’s impassioned hues bleed into each other, one feeling obscuring the other until they are hopelessly entangled, a labyrinth of emotion whose twists and turns can only fully be understood in hindsight. Even when one is sure they have been maligned, it is difficult to know how much and even why. A buildup of disappointment, more often than not, comes boiling out at small provocations, which leads a person to question the validity of their feelings and mix a dose of self-incrimination into the already potent cocktail of disappointment, anger, sadness, and distrust. As these emotions continue to build upon each other, they can become so muddled and complex that one begins to feel like the walking embodiment of You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.’s ardent and overwhelming surface. Unfortunately, the present work’s aesthetic beauty is rarely mirrored in our immediate mental torment. Fortunately, we have artists and art to turn pain into beauty, misfortune into power.

The red is like a blood splattered onto a cloth or a wall. While the blues act like a frame around the green. It is almost like an opened wound.

Depth, colour, movement. Delightful.

Really cool piece, I feel a lot of emotion in it