My heart drifts in blue — weightless, luminous, infinite.
Anthony Pontrello (Italo-American, b. 1950)
The Unbearable Lightness of Blue
24 x 36 x 1.5 in. (60.9 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm)
mixed media on canvas
signed, bottom left, initials AP
signed, In verso “A. Pontrello 2025”
Private Collection, New York, New York
“In The Unbearable Lightness of Blue, I return once more to the ancient dialogue between sea and sky — that luminous boundary where depth meets ascension. This painting emerges from my ongoing meditation on water as both mirror and myth: an element that remembers everything it touches. Here, blue is not a color but a realm — a passage between the mortal and the divine, where memory drifts and light becomes a form of reflection.
Hints of fire and coral erupt within this expanse, like moments of awakening within me. Beneath the layered gestures and fluid transparencies lies a search for balance — between the boundless and the intimate, between the ocean’s breath and the human heart that answers it.
The Unbearable Lightness of Blue belongs to the same lineage as my previous paintings, Blue Between Sky and Water and Between the Drift and the Dream — a continuum of works that explore the mythic undercurrent of the natural world, where all creation seems to flow from a single blue source.” ~AP
My heart drifts in blue — weightless, luminous, infinite.
Anthony Pontrello (Italo-American, b. 1950)
The Unbearable Lightness of Blue
24 x 36 x 1.5 in. (60.9 x 91.4 x 3.8 cm)
mixed media on canvas
signed, bottom left, initials AP
signed, In verso “A. Pontrello 2025”
Private Collection, New York, New York
“In The Unbearable Lightness of Blue, I return once more to the ancient dialogue between sea and sky — that luminous boundary where depth meets ascension. This painting emerges from my ongoing meditation on water as both mirror and myth: an element that remembers everything it touches. Here, blue is not a color but a realm — a passage between the mortal and the divine, where memory drifts and light becomes a form of reflection.
Hints of fire and coral erupt within this expanse, like moments of awakening within me. Beneath the layered gestures and fluid transparencies lies a search for balance — between the boundless and the intimate, between the ocean’s breath and the human heart that answers it.
The Unbearable Lightness of Blue belongs to the same lineage as my previous paintings, Blue Between Sky and Water and Between the Drift and the Dream — a continuum of works that explore the mythic undercurrent of the natural world, where all creation seems to flow from a single blue source.” ~AP