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Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2020
Storm of Abstract Turmoil
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The storm from inside — turmoil as the atmospheric subject, the feeling of weather that is also entirely your own.
Storm (2020) is part of my Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, created during the height of the pandemic when internal and external worlds collided in turbulence. This 48 x 48 inch acrylic on canvas is a visual echo of that emotional unrest — a storm not of skies, but of the psyche.
The painting is layered with restless gestures, tangled lines, and bursts of saturated blues and deep grays, colliding across the canvas like unpredictable weather systems. There’s no fixed center, no grounding element; instead, the composition churns, mirroring the disorientation of navigating an invisible crisis.
In spirit, Storm connects deeply with the works of Julie Mehretu, whose sprawling gestural abstractions often evoke the dissonance of social, political, and urban unrest. Like Mehretu, I aim to create surfaces that pulse with energy, conflict, and layered narratives. Yet where Mehretu’s maps expand outward into collective terrains, Storm turns inward, becoming a weather system of the self — an internal landscape of tension, anxiety, and survival.
This painting is not about depiction but enactment. The strokes resist calm; they refuse to settle. Storm captures the emotional weather of 2020 — the uncertainty, the claustrophobia, and the relentless search for grounding amidst chaos.
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this work stands as both document and release — a painted storm that invites the viewer to step inside, to feel its charge, and perhaps, to find their own rhythm within the chaos.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 8 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 9 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- Prussian blue and cobalt dominate, so the storm holds its color in strong daylight. Its contrast is high enough to sit near glass; only the cadmium yellow and rust brighten under late western sun.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Storm of Abstract Turmoil earns a 5 here because a living room can hold a conversation piece that commands the wall, and the five-foot sweep of graphite black cutting through Prussian blue and rust gives visitors something to keep returning to across an evening.
Bedroom 4/5
The score is 4 rather than 5 because the restlessness coded into those colliding rust and graphite passages will sharpen alertness in a space meant for rest, yet morning light raking across the textured surface softens the tension enough to make it livable.
Details
- Size
- 5 × 6 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Year
- 2020
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Graphite Black · Prussian Blue · Rust · Cobalt · Bronze · Cadmium Yellow · Cobalt
- Weight
- About 45 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Sprig
- Texture2
- Form2
- Colour range4
- Palette2.9
- Contrast4.3
- Abstraction Quotient4
