Sultry - 76x76x2cm

Where colour breathes heat into silence, and desire hides beneath a veil of calm.
Title: Sultry

Artist: Len van Zyl

Year: 2025

Medium: Acrylic and spray paint on stretched canvas

Dimensions: 80 × 80 cm (unframed)

Series: Post-Reverence

Original: One-of-a-kind artwork

In Sultry, I wanted to see if electricity could live inside stillness. I built the surface slowly — veils of Prussian Blue and Payne’s Grey drifting like weather — until the figure began to breathe through them.

The light gathers first around the eyes, a cool haze of pale blue that holds you there before releasing you downward to the mouth — that diffused, fluorescent pink that feels almost like heat after touch. It isn’t performance; it’s presence.

And then the drips from the eye area — not tears, never sentiment — just the evidence of process, of paint behaving as it will. That’s part of the enigma I love: she refuses to explain herself. Sultry doesn’t give up her secrets; she simply exists, humming with quiet voltage.