Year of the Dragon

'Year of the Dragon'

6'x4' / Acrylic on Canvas

2024

Welcome to my first blog post and thanks for being here! I'll be sharing more photos and videos of this one later on the socials but wanted to put this out to my e-mail subscribers before the end of the year.  You all will get early access, with pre-order pricing to limited edition prints when everything lines up. I want to get a holographic and embossed artifact to share with you, just waiting to hear back from a new printer about that.

When I was asked to paint a mini-mural for Hulaween festival, I wanted it to be epic and a natural progression of the more abstract ideas I've been playing with- vaguely human shapes and spaces with op-art patterns, like these:

      

I wanted to make something more representational and discernable that was easier for people to relate to during the festival.

I've been thinking a bit more deeply on what I want to impose on the canvas lately. Instead of throwing paint down and seeing what happens.  I've come to the conclusion that art with emotion, meaning, and intentionality is the stuff that moves me the most.

I was reminded somehow that it's the Chinese year of the Dragon and got to work mocking up the painting you see at the top of the page here.

Both on a personal and on an collective level, the symbology of the dragon seems fitting for this past year and pretty much every year. The Chinese see it as a symbol of power, strength, good fortune and wisdom and throughout various cultures, the dragon is a guide to those who seek transformation and personal sovereignty. It's the perfect talisman for overcoming challenges.

This all resonates with me personally because I've had been concentrating on overcoming my own internal negativities - annoyance, judgment, anger- and transforming them into acceptance, joy and patience through awareness. The water in this piece can be seen as symbolic of those emotions while the gaze of the dragon is the awareness that transforms them.

My sense is that a lot of the collective is in need of these attributes after the avalanche of novel events of the past year. With the amount of information and propaganda we're subjected to on a daily basis we need all the strength, power, wisdom and good fortune we can

If none of the Jungian Archetypal Spirit Realm stuff is your thing, it's still a badass painting of a dragon made out of optical illusion stripes with colorful orbs casting light throughout the piece.

So here it is, my capstone of 2024. I hope you all enjoy it!