I have been working on this painting for the last few months. This has been a real challenge for me to find the music in the composition. I finally finished this work for an joint exhibit at SAM Gallery, Seattle Art Museum in February 2017.

I spent the past few months trying to complete this painting focusing on the original composition. Something was not working though.

Seeking more poetry in the painting, I was inspired last night to paint more from the perspective of looking up at the sky as though one is lying in a field of tulips. I like where this is going. I find this composition more compelling. It is a story about color.

I feel like I broke through something with this new direction in the painting.

I love the colors in the first one. Yet, I needed more rhythm in the painting. Like notes that create music, I needed more interactivity in the notes. The first one is too horizontal and symmetrical. I like the second one...it feels like Stravinsky's "Right of Spring" to me. In particular, the introduction: "The Kiss of the Earth."

Le Sacre du Printemps ("The Rite of Spring".) Pierre Boulez once described The Rite as a piece in which a "vertical chromaticism" stood opposed to a "horizontal diatonicism." By this he meant that while the vertical alignment is often chromatic, the individual parts are in themselves often simple and diatonic."

Chroma = intensity shape to the melody/harmony.

After months of finding the music in this painting, I am exceedingly pleased with the final result.