“Mystic Rainfall” 16×20
For this months Painting of the Month, I chose one of my bigger canvas paintings that recently got moved to my bedroom. If you visited our house, you would find the walls are covered in either 1. photographs (mostly of management) and 2. paintings. And I mean literally covered…every inch of wall space. As paintings sell and I create new pieces, everything tends to get shifted around. I usually like to put my ‘favorites’ in the bedroom. The lighting in there is just awesome and I love having all that crazy color be the second thing I see in the morning (the first thing I see is always a boxer smoosh face, pawing me awake cause its time for breakfast).
“Mystic Rainfall” is an older painting (from 2015) that made its way around the house and has finally ended up back in the bedroom. I have always been drawn to this one. It has this very beautiful combination of darkness and subtle bursts of light. So many gradual color changes throughout. Up close the detailing and texture is perfectly chaotic. It is one of those paintings I have always wished I could re-create.
I painted this one while watching the movie Medicine Man, which just happened to be on tv that day. If you are not familiar, it’s a movie with Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco. Connery is this eccentric scientist who creates a cure for cancer, but can’t seem to re-create how he did it. Bracco comes in as an assistant sent to help him figure it out, and while they are trying to re-do the experiment, we see what native life in the amazon is like. There is a stupid romance element to it too of course. And bull dozers come creeping in to de-forest the area they are working in. I won’t spoil the ending but basically it is a race against time at that point.
As a kid, I absolutely loved this movie. This was my introduction to the rain forest, and I instantly fell in love with this magical place so full of life, color, animals, water, etc. So when I saw it was on, I decided to leave it playing in the background as I worked and this painting is the result.
It started as a black canvas. Which is my favorite to work with cause of the challenge of bringing the color to life from that. Lots of ink sprays and water here. Then adding acrylic paint, just when the inks and water are almost dry on the canvas. I painted this on a flat level surface. Normally I like the inks and water to swirl in a certain direction so I adjust the table to be not quite level. But here, I didn’t want that. I wanted it to look like color piercing from the darkness. Like light coming in through slits in the tree canopy. I used some mixed media here as well. When I think of jungle, I imagine just lots of insects and what not floating around in the air. Just a constant cacophony of noise. And the blue sequins gave me that dual effect.
“Mystic Rainfall” is 16×20. It is available in the Etsy shop for purchase.
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