Black Sunrise

Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 4ft x 3ft
Creation Date: 2023
Collection: Ephemeral Atmosphere

Black Sunrise (2023) is a paradox — a meditation on beginnings that don’t arrive with light, but with shadow. This 48 x 36 inch mixed media painting belongs to the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, where atmosphere is not just backdrop, but subject.

The composition centers around a deep, inky void that radiates outward into cool grays and fleeting iridescence. Hints of copper, pearl, and ash drift across the canvas like dawn filtered through memory. The sun doesn’t rise here — it looms, absorbs, and transforms.

I painted Black Sunrise during a time when clarity felt distant. The world outside was bright, but inwardly I was moving through something heavier, more contemplative. And still, there was beauty. Still, there was emergence — just not in the form we expect.

This piece resonates with the haunting minimalism of Pierre Soulages, whose use of black was not absence but material for light. Like Soulages, I believe black can hold luminosity, not obscure it.

In Black Sunrise, the light isn’t obvious. It’s inside the darkness — embedded, patient, waiting to be noticed. The piece asks: What does it mean to begin in shadow? What does a quiet awakening look like?

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, Black Sunrise becomes a reflection on the cycles we rarely see — not the sun breaking the sky, but the stillness just before. Not a climax. A presence.