Painting

Firefly Thicket

Part of the Metallic Eruption series

A dense web of electric yellow-green tendrils tears across a deep midnight-navy field, tangled with veins of blazing orange and rivers of interference gold. Scattered throughout the chaos are deliberate, rounded drops — lavender, silver-white, pale green — that sit like luminous orbs caught in an overgrown nightscape. The composition is vertical and urgent, every layer competing for your eye, a thicket of color that feels alive and buzzing with nocturnal energy. This piece is loaded with Golden Interference acrylics, and those orbs are where the magic really lives. The lavender drops shift toward a cool silver or warm pink depending on where you're standing. The gold interference layered beneath the neon green creates a shimmering, almost bioluminescent glow that changes character entirely under warm versus cool light. The deep navy base absorbs and then releases color back at you as the interference pigments catch new angles. It's a painting that literally changes through the day. I built this one fast and physical — a dark foundation of navy and teal poured and spread, then the interference gold laid in broad gestural sweeps. The orbs were dropped from height, landing thick and round with that satisfying weight. Then came the neon yellow-green and orange, flung and dragged in rapid strokes that crisscross the entire surface. The macro shots show the real terrain here — deep texture, paint craters, layers breaking through layers. There's a topography to it you can feel from across the room. Painted at the homestead in Riverside, Washington, where summer nights bring real fireflies to the fields and the dark gets deep enough to see them all.