'Stepping Out' by Leon Aarts 2010 Acrylics on canvas

The composition sprawls horizontally like an open road, defying the vertical introspection. At center stage: two elongated figures, one white and spectral, arms akimbo in exuberant gesture; the other a hooded, ochre-toned sentinel, face a mask of enigmatic gaze, flank a threshold of sorts. To the left, a curtained portal in bruised indigos and teals suggests an interior world being shed, while the right erupts into a vibrant exterior: jagged yellow-green hills, a flotilla of toy-like boats on azure waves, and architectural fragments (those brown geometric frames evoking quake-tilted homes) dissolving into abstract glee. The base hums with emerald grounds and red accents, a literal "stepping out" from shadowed confines into sun-drenched possibility.

Aarts wields acrylic with ferocious vitality: bold, unblended strokes create a rhythmic pulse, from the impastoed thickness of the figures' limbs to the feathery drips in the sky. Edges are razor-sharp where they count, the white figure's defiant outline cuts like a declaration, yet blur into impressionistic haze elsewhere, mirroring the quake's disorienting blur of solid and ephemeral. Color theory here is a masterstroke: a limited palette of primaries (vivid yellows, crimsons) clashes against earthier neutrals (ochres, grays), evoking both emotional upheaval and post-trauma renewal. Influences shine through, echoes of Matisse's cut-out joie de vivre in the simplified forms, Kandinsky's synesthetic vibrations in the linework, but Aarts alchemizes them into something uniquely Kiwi: playful yet haunted, like Whiteley's Sydney Harbour fever dreams transplanted to Canterbury Plains.