I call this new painting, an 18″ by 18″ canvas, Epiphany. There’s just something in the way the Red Tree stands against the burst of light in the sky behind it that reminds me of those rare moments of revealed insight, when you realize something that forever changes your perception of the world and perhaps sends you down an unexpected new path.
This was an interesting piece to paint, one that evolved in a different way than most of my work. As it built from the bottom, the sky was painted in a transparent deep yellow wash. IT was okay but it just didn’t have that sense of rightness, didn’t fill the emotional void that was present. So I blacked out the sky and went to my other process of building up the paint which is unusual for me as I seldom mix the two processes except in detail work.
The sky took on a greater role with this incarnation, becoming the engine that moved the piece forward. As I finished the work on the Red Tree, the corona of light around its crown took on an almost religious aspect and the whole thing began to look like a stylized portrait of a saint with a halo and red cloak. And that made the title seem even a bit more appropriate, using a different definition of the word where epiphany is used to describe a manifestation of the divine– a supernatural being.
And maybe that is what all epiphanies are– manifestations of the divine. I have had a moment or two in my life that I view as epiphanies. Whether they truly were is subject to debate– they certainly were personal breakthroughs in perception– but in those moments I certainly felt closer to some sort of divinity than I ever had before. And that’s what I am reminded of in this piece — the blood red of the physical earth and tree becoming one with the ethereal in the light of the sky.
Redtree Times 