Painting

Firefly Field

Five mini canvases arranged in a grid — two wider panels on top, three squares below — forming a single cosmic landscape. Against a deep black ground, electric chartreuse lines arc and whip across every surface like voltage finding its path. Scattered between those neon veins are hundreds of interference dots in lavender, icy blue, teal, orange, and white, each one raised off the canvas like a tiny bead of light. The center bottom panel carries a thick sculptural accent of iridescent gold — a molten anchor point that pulls the entire constellation together. The interference acrylics are doing serious work here. Those lavender and blue dots shift depending on where you stand and how the light hits. Under warm light they lean pink and pearl; under cooler light they push toward silver and violet. The gold impasto in the center catches everything — it's almost metallic, almost alive. Even the chartreuse lines carry an interference shimmer that oscillates between yellow-green and something closer to acid lime as you move around the piece. This is a set that changes every time you walk past it. I built these with speed and instinct. Black ground laid fast, then the interference dots spattered and flicked in rapid succession — lavender first, then teal, then the orange accents as punctuation. The chartreuse came last in long gestural throws across all five canvases at once, tying them together as a unified field. The gold sculptural element on the center panel was pressed on thick with a palette knife, an intentional gravity point in all that weightless scatter. Each panel was painted together as a set and they belong together. Made at the homestead in Riverside, Washington — painted outside under open sky where the real fireflies don't reach but the stars do the same thing these dots do when the light is right.