BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

I didn’t know how it would end.

This painting was inspired by the sight of towers glowing from the late afternoon sun on my highway drive out of the city. Flash memories spontaneously shaped oncoming traffic and speeding motorcycles. The sky told me its stormy backstory, summoning steel-blue clouds and tinting the wet road silver.

But the horizon wouldn’t settle itself and the whole piece was a cryptic, moody mess for weeks. Some days I heard apocalyptic threat; others, the simple freedom of a working day’s end.

I repainted the sky five ways. The sun blazed different holes through the clouds. The light changed the lustre of metal and glass.

Still, I didn’t know where to go. Until a few flecks of gold from the sky fell on the highway.

Suddenly and exactly, I understood. A symbol, a song, a story I know by heart. An old truth. A personal exhortation: Colour outside the lines.

The horizon found its level. I structured in the ricochet of an undetermined event with deep texture to play wild games of light with the coming layers of varnish.

And the road, of course, turned yellow.