Painting

Coral Drift

Diagonal rivers of gold and red-orange cut across a shimmering field of teal, lime, and yellow dot clusters. Two silvery amorphous forms anchor the opposing corners — like ancient stones half-buried in a living reef — while a thick, ropy gold spine twists through the center of the composition. Scattered across the surface, deep burgundy pods with teal eyes stare out from their yellow halos, creating a sense of teeming, organized life within controlled chaos. The interference base layer is where this piece really breathes. That pale, almost pearlescent ground shifts between cool blue and warm silver depending on where you're standing and what light hits it. The teal dot field picks up and scatters this shift, so at certain angles the whole background pulses with an underwater luminosity. The gold rope and the silver corner forms play off each other — one warm, one cool — both metallic, both catching light in completely different ways. This one was built in fast, deliberate layers. The interference ground went down first, then the teal and green dot fields were scattered rapidly across the surface to establish the texture grid. The red-orange diagonal streams were laid in thick and wet, with teal dots pressed directly into them before they set. The gold spine was built up with heavy body paint, twisted and sculpted on the canvas to give it real dimensional presence. The burgundy pods came last — each one a small dark anchor point that locks the whole composition together. Painted back in 2009 at my spot in Eastlake, Seattle, WA.