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Here’s another painting I did in the last half of May.  I have been continuing my midnight forest series.  The nighttime – in the middle of the night – holds a lot of interest for me on so many levels.  I have always loved the night.  And the scenes I attempt to create are meant to convey safety, security, comfort, magic….a safe space to be.  I suspect that many may prefer the early morning or day, and that’s fine.  I like the day and early morning as well.  Actually, when you stop to think about it, at some point, it becomes one and the same:  “I like the quiet early morning hours; it’s quiet and  peaceful, with the sky just beginning to lighten,” vs “I Iike the quiet and stillness of the night, when all is at rest.”  But this painting had its genesis in a somewhat unique way.  When I was a kid growing up, my uncle had an aquarium tank that – like an overgrown garden – wasn’t always well-maintained.  It was filled with tons of floating green moss-like plants, as well as other plants anchored in the gravel below.  It was home to ‘umpteen’ guppies.  The baby guppies would swim at the top and hide within the moss to protect themselves from being eaten by the adult guppies.  I would often stare at the tank for long periods of time, wishing I could be a guppy and swim and hide in the moss. While I didn’t aim to create a literal aquarium scene, I did seek to distillate that memory in this painting. 

Russ Eng

StudioEng.com