10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 4 of 30

Painting Diary Day 4 of 30: Born of Water, 2010

By the time I finished working on this one I had one foot out the door. I had started daydreaming about quitting my corporate desk job where I was making video games for a big company in downtown Seattle (not Amazon). I realized one afternoon that although I was living a comfortable, mostly enjoyable life, I was not following my bliss and had been wasting time and my creative energies making other peoples’ dreams come true. It was time to finally go after my own dreams. I was 36 at the time…

Anyway, when I painted Born of Water I was really loving the work of Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński and I think that influence really shows. I have always been drawn to the modern surrealist painters more than any other genre.

I was also still deep in my tree phase and was exploring fire a lot and the other elements and I wanted to make a painting that featured the ocean. I think my love of contrasting nature made me think of Hawaii were molten lava dramatically meets the sea. In the conceptual stage, this painting was much more of a volcanic looking tree than what I ended up with in the end, but a volcano tree was the initial idea. 

Whatever its made of, this tree has birthed from the ocean, a new entity, still in the process of taking shape as it cools…its roots extend down into the water and take hold. It represents the birth of something new, something born of fire. It will soon be home to many exotic species of birds.

Born of Water, Oil on board, 2010