Trail of Fireflies: Summer Nights, 83” h x 190” w , spray paint and acrylic on metal, 2024.

Summer and winter seasons merge in this otherworldly landscape with shapes and patterns derived from the dance of the fireflies. The winter season is shown by painting trees without their leaves and summer is represented with green grass and firefly markings. Looking at sunsets is one of my favorite activities as they are colorful, ephemeral, and forever changing throughout different weather and cycles of nature. I used artistic license with the colors of the sunset behind the weaving lines of the river. Different species of fireflies create different marks when they glow and fly through the sky. Some make a dot, dash, squiggle, zig zag, or a even a j-shaped flash. It’s pretty rare to be able to see this many synchronous fireflies glow at one time. I have only experienced it though viewing time-lapse photography. The images and phenomena were so inspiring to me that I wanted to immortalize them in a painting. It gives me great joy to imagine their nightly flights. The firefly marks have become a recurring motif in my work and I have incorporated their glow in many paintings. I used Montana Gold spray paint for the background and Nova acrylic mural paint for fine details on the trees, pink flowers, and firefly marks. As typical in my work, the pink flower forms are not literal flowers but flower inspired. They could also be marine creatures, amoebas or something else. I try to evoke a hybrid of subjects in each of my artwork forms and invite the viewer to use their imagination.

See other artworks that incorporate my firefly motif here. The mural design was inspired by one of my smaller studio paintings shown on the firefly blog. That painting is in now in a private collection.

The project took about 36 hours including 6 hours of priming. I used an existing painting and slightly altered it for the initial design to fit the garage format. The smaller studio painting took around 3-4 months of full-time work spread out over 1-2 years time.

Please reach out to me about custom murals. I would love to collaborate with you.

Mural Process

I have several recurring motifs in my work and I’ve been painting the magical glow of fireflies in my paintings since 2008. Here is a curated collection of original works that have used this amazing subject in different ways. Different species of lighting bugs make different glow marks when they fly through the sky. They typically glow when are looking to attract a mate. Look for the different firefly marks in my paintings below including J shape, a dash, a dot, a flicker, half circle or a even zig zag. The collection is organized from largest to smallest size of the artwork.