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Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2023
Black Sunrise
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The sunrise before it decides to be golden — dark holding the moment when the sky still hasn't committed.
Black Sunrise (2023) is a paradox — a meditation on beginnings that don’t arrive with light, but with shadow. This 48 x 36 inch mixed media painting belongs to the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, where atmosphere is not just backdrop, but subject.
The composition centers around a deep, inky void that radiates outward into cool grays and fleeting iridescence. Hints of copper, pearl, and ash drift across the canvas like dawn filtered through memory. The sun doesn’t rise here — it looms, absorbs, and transforms.
I painted Black Sunrise during a time when clarity felt distant. The world outside was bright, but inwardly I was moving through something heavier, more contemplative. And still, there was beauty. Still, there was emergence — just not in the form we expect.
This piece resonates with the haunting minimalism of Pierre Soulages, whose use of black was not absence but material for light. Like Soulages, I believe black can hold luminosity, not obscure it.
In Black Sunrise, the light isn’t obvious. It’s inside the darkness — embedded, patient, waiting to be noticed. The piece asks: What does it mean to begin in shadow? What does a quiet awakening look like?
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, Black Sunrise becomes a reflection on the cycles we rarely see — not the sun breaking the sky, but the stillness just before. Not a climax. A presence.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 5 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 8 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- The black ground holds steady, and the gold emerging from it answers real light: morning sun lifts it gently, late sun warms it. Smooth as the surface is, keep it out of direct glare.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Black Sunrise earns a 5 here because its slow gold emerging from black and earth reads as a daily ritual in a room built around return, and morning light through a window will shift the work hour by hour in exactly the way the painting intends.
Hotel lobby 5/5
A 5: the 3 × 4 ft scale commands a lobby wall without overwhelming it, and the reverent stillness of light patient inside darkness sets an atmosphere of arrival and threshold that no figurative work could deliver as quietly.
Details
- Size
- 3 × 4 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Finish
- Epoxy over acrylic. The resin lifts the color off the canvas and holds it forward, so the surface deepens as the light moves across the room.
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Earth Tone · Black · Gold
- Weight
- About 22 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Fork
- Texture1
- Form2
- Colour range2
- Palette4.1
- Contrast3.6
- Abstraction Quotient-1
