Aurora 

A vibrant painting depicts a night sky filled with green and white splashes resembling stars, nebulas, and hints of an aurora. Below, a forest of leafless trees is rendered in dark red hues, creating a striking contrast against the illuminated, cosmic background.

Like most of my paintings, this one started off in another direction. I tend to go where my artistic Muse takes me, so planning is the first thing out the window. 

I started playing around on the canvas and eventually ended up with this. The scene in the painting is ostensibly a forest under the night sky, in abstract form, of course.  I named it ‘Aurora’ because it reminded me of a bucket list item, seeing the Aurora Borealis. 


A variety of techniques went into the creation of the artwork. I assume they have proper names in the art world, but I used a combination of wet canvas / color bleed, spatter (as the result of playing air-drummer while my favorite music was on), and using black gesso to fill in the branches.

Overall, I’m going with a win for the rescue of the painting. 18×24, acrylic on canvas, April 30, 2017.