Visions on the Dancing Water

2017

A pale meditative woman wearing a simple purple-orange dress drifts in a river, her body suspended looking up at the sky. Her long, purple hair floats in the unnaturally vibrant blue waters of the river, with dark lines of small plants dotting both banks of the water.

Technique

Of all the pieces I’ve painted, I focused most on having fun with textures and extremely vibrant colors.

I remember spending days having fun making the water textures swirl and surf in just the way I wanted them to: I wanted the surface details to be too detailed, making them a world unto themselves. The rain was added last, to provide another dimension to why the water looks as chaotic as it does. The extreme, almost glowing colors of the water were added in very slowly over time to make sure they didn’t appear washed out, which can happen with colors this intense.

The woman was painted from multiple references, and it took a while for me to get her expression right. I wanted her to look a very specific kind of serene: detached, even depressed, channeling John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, though with more of a spiritual and naturalist, rather than classical or mythological, connotation.