Abstract Painting

in the fire

When I first saw this work, the yellow part which I supposed represents the fire grab my attention at once. Connelly uses light, cold colors on the upper part of the painting, and uses strong, warm colors at the bottom part. This strong contrast leads viewers' eyes to the transition part which is the  flame. 

The painting technique he uses resembles the pointillism, which is using small, distinct dots of color to create image. We can see a lot of color dots in this work. The dots also give me a feeling that they are the dancing ashes from the fire, which show some movement and make the work more dynamic.

When I look closer, I saw that the painting contains many words, which I cannot see very clearly but can recognize some alphabets like "F" and "e". And all these words are floating in the light blue space and create a mysterious feeling. I imagine the words may be spells which give me some auditory impact too.

Considering that Connelly always likes to present the dark side of the world in his work, I wonder is the flame going to burn down all the things, all the words and light, leaving the world dark and empty? The light blue part is foggy-like and it seems it is going to disappear soon. Fire normally means light and hope, making people feel cheerful. But here, I believe he uses it to represent a destructive force that ruins all the beautiful things. However, in this picture, light is still fighting with the darkness, we never know who  is going to win. Maybe this is also a question unknown to him.