Waves of Threaded Flame, a large red abstract thread painting by Ritu Raj (oil on canvas with thread, 5 × 6 ft)

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Organic Movement · 2025

Waves of Threaded Flame

Organic Abstraction in Full Motion

5 × 6 ft · Oil on canvas with thread · 2025

Available · in the studio, Phoenix

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Fire in full motion — thread painting at its most unconditional, the flame that has found its wave form.

Crimson first. Then scarlet layered into it, flame-orange pressing from underneath, iridescent purples and blues arriving at the edges like something cooling that refuses to cool. Waves of Threaded Flame is a painting that burns without settling — the temperature holds across the full six feet.

This is an Organic Movement work. Thread soaked in pigment, released across wet oil — the strokes follow the thread's tension and the canvas's pull rather than a predetermined path. What looks like waves is waves: the literal motion of the making, preserved. The body moved, the thread recorded it, the oil fixed what happened in the space between intention and release.

Thread becomes both line and gesture here. Not a tool I wield but a collaborator I follow — one that knows things about viscosity and gravity that I have to keep learning.

Pat Steir understood that the most powerful surfaces hold a continuous negotiation between the painter's will and the medium's nature. Sam Francis understood that color could carry the full weight of emotion without explaining it. Waves of Threaded Flame lives in that understanding — hot, fluid, and defiantly physical in a way that asks you to stand close.

Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.

The space it needs

Wall
At least 8 ft wide
Ceiling
9 ft or more
Light
Warm ambient light enhances organic palette — thread catches light beautifully
Daylight
Scarlet, carmine and flame orange are exactly what Arizona afternoon sun intensifies; on a west wall the whole field burns hotter than it was painted. North or east light holds the flame, and raking light shows the thread.

Lives best in

Bedroom 5/5

Warm ambient light pulls iridescent purple and deep blue out of the threaded surface in a way that shifts through an evening, and the painting's emotional register, solitude without grief, is precisely what a private room at this scale can hold.

Living room 4/5

The five-foot sweep of oxblood and scarlet, threaded through with actual raised gesture, earns its place on a generous living room wall by generating the kind of sustained looking a gathering space needs, though the ceiling must clear nine feet and the wall run unbroken to at least eight.

Details

Size
5 × 6 ft (W × H)
Medium
Oil on canvas with thread
Year
2025
Collection
Organic Movement
Palette
Oxblood · Carmine · Crimson · Scarlet · Flame Orange · Iridescent Purple · Deep Blue
Weight
About 45 lb
Ready
In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks

Its ArtGram

ArtGram.Spur

  • Texture3
  • Form2
  • Colour range3
  • Palette3.1
  • Contrast2.8
  • Abstraction Quotient1.5
Read the full reading on ArtGraph →

Keywords

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