The Fire Dance (2019)

The Fire Dance (2019).  This is an image I've returned to over the years as a sort of benchmark image for my progress as a painter.  It's a group of kids dancing in concentric circles, though it may be getting harder and harder to see the more I twist and tweek it.  Here's the original I did back in 1997:

And then this one a few years later:

In the summer of 1996, about a week after graduating from Cal Poly with my degree in Architecture, I moved to Italy.  When I arrived at Casa Cares, there was a youth camp staying at the villa and one there activities was this dance.  It was an image that was impressed on me ever since, marking the beginning of a new life in a new culture with an exploded mind.  An experience that still defines who I feel I am most.