Oxidized Vertebra Painting

This painting was created late at night, after my household had gone to sleep. The stillness of such an hour is beautifully translated in this piece: dark, yet shimmering with color and potential. I particularly love the simplicity of the limited palette in this oil painting. I primarily used a transparent red oxide with some Titanium White for the opaque structure of the bone and a tiny punch of Cerulean Blue to dramatize the warm/cool contrast in the colors. The frame perfectly matches the oil painting's colors with its dark wood and russet undertoned edges. This painting belongs to a larger, ever growing collection of bone paintings. Studying anatomy and the bone structure of animal and human skulls is helpful in my figurative paintings, yes, but my obsession with the subject goes far beyond this extrapolation. I love the density and color of bones, the textures and profiles. They are never straight or perfectly curved. They hold and reflect light in opalescent tones. Bones tell a story. Bones change to reflect our lived experiences and are collected to remind us of the mineral quality of all life. The vertebra bone that served as the model for this painting has been in my collection of curiosities since I found it a field in Wyoming in 2007. I believe it is from a cow, though it might possibly be a deer.