This painting was a new request for me. A family member passed away recently and was cremated. I mixed his ashes with most of the paint and came up with this for his mother. When asked what kind of painting she wanted, she replied “Modern art.”  To me, this means a billion different things, but my mind tends to gravitate towards more abstract concepts when I first hear those words. I didn’t really have a plan at first; in fact, I started one painting and it wasn’t striking me in the right way for what I was trying to accomplish. This turned out more to my liking. Painting with ashes was interesting. I had to strain it through a small screen to get it finer than it was initially (i.e. I had to strain out the bits of bone). I left some texture on the canvas using molding past in my paint mixture. I used Golden Open Acrylics.

Mixing. Here you can see the bone.

Painting abstract compositions is refreshing. I feel like even if there is a direction you’d like to go, the painting takes you along on its own journey. I represented the sun (or, son), along with a loose representations of a mountain and clouds, upside down rain, all incorporated in red, the favorite color of the recipient.

-ALN