Splash: A Meditation on Blue by J. Steven Manolis
- Elevated Magazines
- Dec 10, 2025
- 4 min read
As a colorist and abstract painter, I have spent my artistic life chasing the elusive moment when a hue becomes more than pigment—when it transforms into emotion, memory, and quiet revelation. For me, color is never merely visual; it is a language of the spirit, a “visual feel-good” that resonates deep within the soul. My philosophy of art is unapologetically existential. I believe that truly great painting must carry a communicative current: from the artist’s inner world onto the canvas, and then from the canvas into the heart and mind of the viewer. This invisible triad—artist, work, beholder—is the sacred pulse of everything I create.
I am, at my core, a series painter. Over the course of my career I have completed more than twenty-seven distinct series, each governed by a single dominant color or chromatic dialogue. Yet ten to twelve of these series account for nearly ninety percent of my lifetime production. Among them, two series reign supreme in my affections and in the affections of collectors: REDWORLD and SPLASH.
In every series, one color assumes the role of protagonist. It is the emotional anchor, the narrative thread. Within each series I maintain rigorous consistency—repeating gestures, marks, geometries, and saturations that become instantly recognizable signatures. Those who know my work can identify a canvas as mine within seconds and, more often than not, name the series to which it belongs.
This recognizability is not accidental; it is the fruit of disciplined repetition and an unwavering commitment to distinctiveness. In the end, an artist’s legacy rests on two pillars alone: uncompromising quality and unmistakable identity.
Of all the questions I am asked, the most frequent is deceptively simple: “What is your favorite color?” My answer is equally simple, and entirely honest: I have no single favorite. Every color possesses its own irreplaceable voice. Yet if I must crown one hue with special sovereignty, it is blue.
Blue is the most omnipresent color on earth. Lift your eyes on any continent, at any hour of daylight, and half your visual field is claimed by the sky’s ceaseless variations of blue. Add proximity to water—ocean, lake, or swimming pool—and blue’s dominion becomes absolute.
A sailor alone on the open sea inhabits a world that is, for days or weeks, almost monochromatically blue. This natural ubiquity has imprinted itself on human perception across millennia; we are, quite literally, conditioned to accept blue as the ultimate neutral.
Art history has long taught that “color fights color.” White and black (technically non-colors) and the metallic family remain diplomatically neutral with every hue they meet. In my view, blue belongs unequivocally in that diplomatic circle. No other color adapts so effortlessly to any interior, any architecture, any mood. Pair it with crisp white and it becomes the epitome of maritime chic; surround it with warm woods or cool stone and it recedes or advances with perfect grace. Blue never argues with its environment; it simply belongs.
It is no surprise, then, that my SPLASH series has become one of my most beloved bodies of work—and one of the most sought-after by collectors and designers alike. These paintings bring the serene authority of water and infinite sky into the home, offering a visual exhale in an often overstimulated world.
My technique is inseparable from the emotional effect I seek. Trained originally as a watercolorist, I have carried the lessons of transparency and flow into my acrylic practice. I thin my paints generously, sometimes to the consistency of ink, earning me the private nickname “vitreous painter.” By masterfully varying the ratio of pigment to water, I explore a single blue through an almost orchestral range of saturations—from dense, velvety depth to the most ethereal veil. What appears at first glance to be many blues is, in truth, one blue singing in multiple voices. This chromatic modulation, this liquid alchemy, remains a signature rarity in contemporary abstraction.
When I work, it is always some version of the famous saying “Waiting for Godot.” What do I mean by this? Because I paint vitreously—given my watercolor training, I never paint straight from the tube but instead mix water with acrylic paint in varying ratios—I am constantly waiting for each layer to dry. This drying process can take hours or even days, during which I continuously study the piece. That prolonged scrutiny always takes me back to my intense thirty-year apprenticeship with my best friend, mentor, and teacher, Wolf Kahn. He would relentlessly drill into me: “The artist’s alertness to the coloristic demands of each picture, the ability to respond to the picture’s needs, to feed the color until its appetite is satiated—these are the true measures of a colorist’s talent.”
Thus, there is always intense scrutiny in my process, an ongoing dialogue of “What is?” and “What might be?” I attempt to feed color to the work, always hoping each canvas or sheet of museum paper is voraciously hungry. This challenge never gets old for me. When I say “I just love painting,” it is precisely this analyzing-and-feeding process that I find so addictive and enjoyable. Over the years I have become both accomplished and sophisticated in this accretive artistic activity from the first mark to the final resolution, whether the piece is geometric or gestural. And the thrill of completion—the moment a work finally declares itself finished—never diminishes. That tangible endpoint is a deeply satisfying reward in an otherwise entirely subjective and sequential journey.
My hope is that the SPLASH paintings reproduced here speak clearly of this lifelong love affair with blue—of its calm, its universality, its quiet magnificence. More than anything, I paint to forge a connection: from my hand, through the work, and into your life. If even one canvas leaves you lighter of spirit, more attuned to the beauty that surrounds us always, then the circle is complete—and my purpose as a colorist is fulfilled.
