New Light

Dan’s passing has had a huge effect on me, and I have been grieving.  But he has once again brought some light into my life.  I wanted to do a tribute piece to him, and kept thinking about light under and on water.  I spoke with Mark Kriegsman, his dear friend and co-creator of FASTLED and he had been thinking along the same lines and was already beginning a program designed to feel like water.

I hadn’t been well enough since the CFS/ME to sit up long enough to paint, but I was planning to try out encaustics for ages (even before getting sick).  With some new medication I have been better enough to start painting again, and so I created this piece.

It is encaustic paint on plexiglass with a special program Mark and I worked out together on the FASTLED platform which moves and shifts and changes colors like light under deep water (the video shows it best).

Dan died in the water, but he was also on the dive boat because he loved the water so much.  He brought light to so many and it seemed a fitting tribute to make a work that felt like light under water.  Beneath These Waves Lies Light was the result.

I feel electrified.  I want to make more.  I have other moments of beautiful light that I want to capture in a semi-abstract way.  I am starting a whole new series. This is his last gift to me- the inspiration to make new art.