Embers and Turquoise Fading Notes is a meditation on how music lingers long after the last note has dissolved. Painted on a wooden panel, the work layers ember-toned warmth—burnt oranges, deep maroons, and smoky browns—over fragments of old sheet music. Traces of notation and collage quietly anchor the composition, like a song half-remembered beneath the surface.
Across this ground, curved forms, black contour lines, and gestural sweeps of white move in a rhythm that feels almost musical rather than literal. Pockets of turquoise flicker through the warmer layers like cool, unexpected chords—those flashes of emotion that rise back when a familiar melody returns to mind. The interplay of opaque passages, translucent glazes, and textured marks creates the sense that the image has been built up over time, each layer holding its own echo of sound and feeling.
As with my signature pieces, nothing here is purely decorative: the ember colours speak to the warmth of lived experience, while the fading notation suggests memory shifting from clear to impressionistic. The turquoise notes act as brief, lucid moments of recall—those small, surprising sparks when the past feels suddenly present again. Viewed up close, the work rewards slow looking; from a distance, it reads as a single, pulsing field of energy.
The collage is old sheet music which belonged to my late father when he was a child.
Embers and Turquoise Fading Notes is ideal for an intimate space—hung where someone might pause, breathe, and let their own soundtrack rise to the surface. It offers not just an abstract image, but an invitation to listen inwardly to the songs and stories that continue long after the music has technically stopped.
Medium: Mixed Media on Premium Grade Pine Board
Finish: 2 Varnish System: Satin finish
Size: 12x12 inches (300x300 mm) 1.4 inch (35mm) Edge
Frame: Unframed
Size with Frame: N/A
