Last week was pretty crazy here in Austin, TX. Over 7 inches of snow, freezing conditions, single-digit nights, power outages, water shortages, the threat of freezing pipes, and still under Covid lockdown. Not a typical week with most everyone we know having various trials and tribulations. I felt sorry for the flora and fauna that had to endure the sudden extremes last week as they had no protection. This week’s weather began as though Mother Nature had complete short-term memory loss and even yesterday the weather outside was in the mid-’80s and sunny. What can you do except to have a wide variety of clothing on hand 🙂

I started this piece last week while the power was still out in our house. I set up at a table using outside daylight as a light source. Instead of quickly finishing the piece like I always do, I decided to do the background and let it sit for a day or two while we were still dealing with all the crazy conditions: cold, no power, water restrictions, etc. After a couple of days, I added the black brush stroke using a new black paint that absorbs almost 99% of light. It’s like looking into a black velvet void, pretty awesome and very appropriate for the week we had. Next, I added a red sun which decided to come out on Friday and started to warm up our neighborhood and melt the frozen trees, which were raining ice on us that day. Finally, over the weekend I added some small gold touches as things around us started to settle down and life was beginning to feel like normal again. I still let the piece sit for a couple more days taped up on my table as though it needed some time to settle down, too.

This ended up being an unexpected experiment — to paint over several days trying to capture different moods along the way and have it evolve organically into one piece.

I truly hope that everyone came out OK from last week’s extreme conditions.

Peace…

“Close Call With a Warming Trend”