Persian Series 1 – 5

In the spirit of the Roman, Arabic, Egyptian and Babylonian Series, these hand-painted films attempt to imagine the kind of Persian visual thinking which created their calligraphy, miniatures and aesthetic designs in general. 1) This hand-painted and elaborately step-printed work begins with a flourish of reds and yellows and purples in palpable fruit-like shapes interspersed with darkness, then becomes lit, lightning-like, by sharp multi-colored twigs of shape, all resolving into shapes of decay. 2) Multiple thrusts and then retractions of oranges, reds, blues, and the flickering, black, textural dissolves suggesting an amalgam approaching script. 3) Dark, fast-paced symmetry in mixed weave of tones moving from oranges and yellows to blue-greens, then retreating (dissolves of zooming away) to both rounded and soft-edged shapes shot with black. 4) Elaborate petal-like, stamen-and-stem-like, multi-colored flowers rising in white space until the whole field is as if crushed by floral designs in madly swift mixtures of every conceivable previous (in the Persian Series) shape, evolving back to brilliant petals against what was at the beginning of #4. 5) Dark blood red slow shifting tones, often embedded in dark, and often shot-through with parallel wave-like lines composed of all previous shapes and flowers, as if trying, linearly to evolve a glyph-script. (Stan Brakhage)