Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Toxic Beauty: Volcán Poás Revisited

Ordinarily I am not a huge fan of landscape paintings, but lately I have become more interested in this genre. Perhaps it is because I am in Costa Rica, and interesting landscapes are everywhere.

I painted this view of Volcán Poás a few days ago from a photograph I took. Painting from photographs is also something I try to avoid, but in this case it was unavoidable. Volcán Poás releases billowing sulfur clouds that are toxic, and it is not advisable to linger near the volcano crater for more than twenty minutes to avoid overexposure, so painting from life would not be possible.

This image was a lot of fun to paint. It was a change from the hard edged geometry that my paintings usually consist of, and was painted relatively quickly. The volcano was so foreign and something of a moonscape and I hope to have captured that uniqueness in this piece. I am thinking that perhaps I will paint a few more landscapes while I am in Costa Rica.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This painting is really nice Brad. There is not much difference between it and the photograph! That's my boy! xoxo

Anonymous said...

Holy crap he's had an epiphany.

Anonymous said...

In Volcan Poas,
God has stirred together in a great bowl lava and sulfur, time and heat,
an other-worldly soup
that feeds our hunger
for wonder.

Gwennifer

Anonymous said...

Toxic? OSHA says: you're fineeeee!

OH, the suspense of painting on a live volcano!