“The earth has music for those who listen.” — William Shakespeare
This painting began with green.
I wasn’t trying to paint music. I was simply exploring green—watching how many different greens exist in nature and how differently they can speak to us.
As the color grew across the canvas, something unexpected began to happen.
Lines started moving.
They flowed, curved, gathered, and separated, almost like currents or waves. Then came the musical notes. I didn’t plan them in the beginning. They seemed to appear as though the earth itself had begun to make a sound.
And suddenly, I could see it:
the earth was not silent.
The green became the landscape. The white became movement—wind, water, perhaps the slow drifting of leaves. The red notes became the rhythm.
I thought about my favorite moments in nature—the quiet transformation of autumn, when leaves let go and dance slowly toward the ground. There is something almost musical about that movement: beautiful, temporary, and completely beyond our control.
Perhaps that is what surprised me most about this painting. I began with an exploration of color, but the canvas took me somewhere I hadn’t expected to go.
It became The Music of Mother Earth.
Looking back at it now, I realize that sometimes a painting doesn’t begin with an idea.
“The earth has music for those who listen.”
— William Shakespeare
This painting began with green.
I wasn’t trying to paint music. I was simply exploring green—watching how many different greens exist in nature and how differently they can speak to us.
As the color grew across the canvas, something unexpected began to happen.
Lines started moving.
They flowed, curved, gathered, and separated, almost like currents or waves. Then came the musical notes. I didn’t plan them in the beginning. They seemed to appear as though the earth itself had begun to make a sound.
And suddenly, I could see it:
the earth was not silent.
The green became the landscape.
The white became movement—wind, water, perhaps the slow drifting of leaves.
The red notes became the rhythm.
I thought about my favorite moments in nature—the quiet transformation of autumn, when leaves let go and dance slowly toward the ground. There is something almost musical about that movement: beautiful, temporary, and completely beyond our control.
Perhaps that is what surprised me most about this painting. I began with an exploration of color, but the canvas took me somewhere I hadn’t expected to go.
It became The Music of Mother Earth.
Looking back at it now, I realize that sometimes a painting doesn’t begin with an idea.
Sometimes, you simply listen.