The Striker

About the Work

The Striker is the collection's portrait of the game itself. A player in red surges across the pitch, body coiled over the ball in the split second before contact, while teammates and the skeletal towers of the skyline blur behind a sky shattered into strokes of orange, navy and gold. A Canadian flag stands sentinel at the right edge, and the 'Vancouver 2026' script arcs overhead.

Pius abandons fine anatomical description for momentum, letting heavy diagonal knife-strokes carry the figure forward. The ball, built from a few thick dabs of white and ochre, becomes the still point at the heart of the storm. It is action painting in the most literal sense — sport rendered as raw kinetic energy.

Process & Technique

The figure is constructed from bold, directional knife-strokes that all lean into the kick, an underlying diagonal scaffold giving the body its thrust. Pius keeps the background broken and abstract so nothing competes with the motion, then loads the foreground in the thickest impasto of the series, so the striker literally stands proud of the canvas surface.