Amsterdam street

Alt text: Abstract turquoise scene with metallic gold bands, gabled rooftop outlines, and thin black line sketches

Detailed description:

Leidari Dey

Amsterdam Street.

Acrylic paint and markers on canvas (stretched on stretcher bars, unframed).

30×40 cm, vertical.

Style: Abstract with architectural elements.

The painting is dominated by turquoise and teal tones layered across most of the canvas. The background consists of overlapping vertical brushstrokes in shades of turquoise, green, and blue, interspersed with thin vertical drips of gold and pale yellow paint.

At the very top of the canvas, a dark black area appears, crossed by several thin vertical golden stripes.

Below this area runs a wide, irregular band of metallic gold paint in two slightly different shades. The band has a thick texture, visible brush marks, and a thin black outline along its lower edge.

Beneath it, a continuous white line forms a jagged, stepped contour resembling a row of narrow gabled rooftops.

In the lower half of the painting, thin black lines draw simplified linear forms suggesting street elements. On the right side, a thin black line forms a tall, angled structure. Near its middle, a small geometric shape appears, composed of several white triangular planes joined together and outlined in black.

Nearby, several chairs and a small table are indicated with thin black lines, forming light geometric outlines.

Additional black line drawings appear across the lower area as short, segmented marks and simple geometric forms, creating a sketch-like graphic layer over the painted background.

Noise, clatter, splashes — all of it, anything at all, as long as you are around; and from now on it will be quiet, and I will be calm, and I will be able to breathe.

A big mountain, a little mountain, a long road, three stops a day; we will walk for a week or two, you will be near, and we will look ahead, never back, and the road will unfold beneath our feet, where before there were no roads for me.

Green, blue, bright — she shouted at me, looked long into my eyes, sobbed — and I saw her, just as I saw you standing right in front of me, only it wasn’t you, not you, but a single thought, a memory — and I can be again.

When you were gone, when you were no longer with me, I breathed, and not just as a habit — I breathed because I had learned how to breathe, and now I will never forget.