I Went to Nicaragua and Painted a Volcano

This one's easy because I only have one photograph. February 2016 I went with my best friend Hannah to Ometepe Island in Nicaragua. We spent a grueling 6 days there, filled with food poisoning and a troublesome guide, and I was so thankful to arrive home, luggage safely lost in Houston, Texas. Fantastic.

But the entire trip was not lost on me. I had a good 700 photos or so on my camera to filter through in the months after the trip. One particular photo was taken my first night there, just hours before I was hit with the worst (and only) food poisoning of my entire life. I was better two days later.

Anyways, too much information aside, I thought it was really cool that where I was currently standing, in that location, I was directly between two volcanoes. One of them was an active volcano too. So that is what inspired this painting. The red background, the gold all over the horizon, the blue tropical water. The colours there were amazing, and the heat was intense, and the bugs and animals were all sorts of whacked. But the scenery, man I could look at that scenery forever.

Nica Volcano

So this is my Volcano. It is 4 feet wide x 2 feet tall, 1.5 inches thick, and entirely acrylic paints and medium. Loads of texture, because I know there's some texture fiends out there, and the same boarder effect you see in my Blue and Purple Trees. I just think it's a neat way to frame a painting without actually putting it in a frame. Plus, what the function of a frame is for, is to focus the viewers eye inwards. If you have a hard line around the edge, the viewer will instinctively look further inwards, towards the center of the painting, instead of just wandering off the edge and onto the next one. It's important to me to keep my viewer looking, because there is always so much more to see under the surface.

I'm asking $350.00 for this one.

Thanks for reading :) Feel free to share this post if you or someone you know is in the market for some new art. I'm ready to deliver.

Acid Tree - My Plunge Into the Abstract

This tree is what did it for me. I painted for 12 hours, layers upon layers upon layers, just acrylic paint, water, and my brushes. And sometimes my fingers. I had an epiphany while painting this tree about how I can layer colours over each other in such a way that when you look at any one spot on the canvas (it's actually a board, but that's besides the point) you will be able to notice a myriad of colours underneath. How can that splotch of blue also be red and green and purple? I love it. I love it so much.

Acid Tree

This is what my tree looks like right now hanging on my wall. I used flash on my camera so it's not a streak-less photo, but that is what the first photo is for - a perfect display of what my piece really looks like, camera and technology flaws aside. This is how non-empty your wall would look:

Here is my tree just a few hours after I had finally put the last paint stroke on (my final stroke was Alizarin, in case you were wondering):

 And here's a little something for the kids. Below left I am taking a photo with my painting to be in an article in my local paper about my art scholarship I had been awarded at the end of my second year of school. Below right I am taking a photo in front of my painting because I noticed my hair matched.

More about the painting: It is 3 feet by 3 feet, 1 3/4 inches thick, and made of the same type of chemically treated wood as my Blue and Purple Tree from my previous post. I made a frame all around the back of the board so it can hang on a couple of screws/nails. I am asking $400.00 for this piece though I would like 5. And it fits beautifully in between my Blue and Purple Trees, so if you want all three, I'm willing to discuss numbers. They work mighty fine together as a feature item.

Thanks for reading, and please give this a share if you know someone needing a spruce in their decor.