Commission painting of Bolivar lighthouse near Galveston
Let’s take a closer look at the symbolism…btw you can see it before it goes to the collector’s home at our Fall Biannual open studios event this Saturday. (Go to the Events page, or the bottom of any page of this site.) Ok, let’s get back to the what’s beneath the surface of this painting:
White light is actually a combination of all colors of light.
So I decided with this commission I would show the aerobeakon to have isolated colors from the spectrum of visible light with their respective wavelengths. I found a graph showing the waves of each color, superimposed them on top of each other, then warped the graph into the light cone shape. Once I had this, I placed it into my composition and referenced that to paint the final image. So not only is it a cool looking painting, but it also shows the actual frequencies of each light wave of color.
There are constellations in the sky
They were referenced from a star map using the birth date of the collector’s father, had he lived to that last birthday. It is a view of what the night sky would have looked like from this vantage point. This was extremely difficult, as once the star map was traced back, I then had to work out how to position the map where it would be in perspective to the horizon facing in this exact viewpoint. I think I got it.
In much of my recent work I have shifted from fully colorful compositions to more muted tones and greys
…for the majority of an image and especially its background. This draws more attention to the focal point which has more color saturation. A blast of color in an otherwise dark and grey world. Because the world, like sailing the sea on a dark stormy night, is often rough and cruel. It is only in brief moments that we get to enjoy something, but when we do, it is highly illuminating. In a world of suffering, these tiny glimpses of heaven make it all seem worth it. We wouldn’t even know what good was if there wasn’t bad. We need this darkness and color contrast to better understand how good the little things in life really are. Adding the fog to this image only reenforces the problem of the human condition; to see through the grey fog and find your way back to the shore. It is our consciousness that makes the world colorful. Otherwise, everything is grey.
During my research on the lighthouse I found some stories relevant to this particular painting’s imagery.
The limited legends and claims of hauntings that I found range from strange shadows seen on the lighthouse grounds and in the lightroom itself to mysterious mists and fogs erupting from the lighthouse during particularly nasty storms. I found that interesting since this piece predominately features a mystic fog engulfing the lighthouse scene.
Also, The Weather Bureau – precursor to the modern National Weather Service had a chance to warn people about the 1900 Great Storm that killed thousands. Apparently, the director of The Weather Bureau, Willis Moore, felt very jealous of how skilled the Cubans had gotten in predicting hurricanes. When the Cubans issued their predictions and forecast for The Great Storm of 1900, Willis Moore disregarded their prediction on purpose and made a completely inaccurate and scientifically unsupported prediction purely out of pique. 1000’s of lives lost due to one man’s inability to admit some people he hated was right.
The Great Storm of 1900 in Galvestion was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history and the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane overall. The hurricane left between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000.
It should be noted that the lighthouse keeper at the time of the storm, Harry Claiborne, housed 125 souls in the lighthouse during the storm, and even sheltered and fed those survivors for a long period after the storm ended.
Prints available in the shop
If you want to read more about the history of Bolivar lighthouse, check out these references I pulled from: