Lightning Strike, 2021, oil on canvas, 40.75 x 30.25 cm
Before I started this painting, I did a smaller version to see what problems, if any, might be for a larger painting. The lightning I painted was straight line zig-zags but I realised that that only occurs in cartoons. I had a look at a photograph of lightning and saw that its shape is like the vein network in the human body or the roots of trees with no straight lines. With this in mind I painted the next lightning picture from the imagination with the idea of vein like strains of light. Lightning illuminates the sky when it flashes so it was tricky to get a balance between how much sky to brighten and how much to leave slightly darker for compositional contrast. The idea of the fire was an after thought, which often happens during the development of a composition.
