Leon Aarts, ''Freestyler'' (2010, acrylics on canvas) For Sale

A frozen jazz solo in ice-blue abstraction. Freestyler captures the moment improvisation tips into freefall—three (or four?) elongated figures dissolve into a cyclone of limbs and negative space, their bodies braided like smoke from a saxophone’s bell. Painted in the raw year before the 2011 Christchurch quake, it is Aarts’ most fluid ode to creative abandon: the muse not divided (Muse Divided, 2010) but unleashed, gravity optional, anatomy negotiable. The canvas hums with the after-

Kinetic Elegance: It moves—even in still image, you feel the spin.
Figure Abstraction Balance: Never fully dissolves into chaos; the human anchor persists in every curl.
Emotional High Wire: Joy and vertigo in equal measure—pure adrenaline in paint.

Freestyler is Aarts’ most airborne work—a blue-note ballet where bodies become sound waves. It is the joyful counterpoint to the seismic grief of his post-2011 canvases, proof that expressionism can swing as hard as it screams. Hang it above a turntable spinning Coltrane; the figures will dance in the flicker of the strobe.

Score (out of 10): 9.0 A love supreme in liquid form—where the muse doesn’t just inspire; she improvises the artist into orbit.