“Whelm” continues my exploration of light in the landscape, with countless hand-painted circles creating a luminous presence that both emerges from and recedes into the canvas. Vertical silhouettes that echo the shadows I remember from my family’s tree farm frame the radiant center of the composition.
The painting’s golden atmosphere comes from layers of acrylic paint accented with 24 karat gold leaf and iridescent pigment. In the darker regions, I used hand-mixed ultramarine and cobalt blues, combining dry pigments with acrylic dispersion to achieve an unusually saturated, matte surface. This creates a striking contrast with the lighter passages, where the scattered gold leaf catches and reflects light.
A blue iridescent pigment, though subtle in photographs, adds another dimension when viewing the arm-span wide canvas in person. The interplay between deep blues and varied lighter tones creates unexpected but successful color relationships that I feel lucky to have landed upon.
