How Decadent You Are

SOLD

30” x 40”

Oil, acrylic, and gouache on canvas

New Zealand’s Aoraki / Mount Cook is the subject of How Decadent You Are. This area was on the itinerary for my 2020 honeymoon, which was cancelled along with everything else in 2020. I became enchanted with this place while researching it as we planned the trip. New Zealand in general has a reputation for humblingly vast landscapes, Aoraki notwithstanding. As I painted this place in lieu of being able to visit it in person I wanted to capture in its depiction the inherent lavishness of this kind of terrain, decadent in its exaggerated scale and contrast with its mineral-opaque waters, grand geological structures, and glacial presence. It seems almost too good to be true. I also wanted to convey how dreamlike a place only visited in the mind can be, creamy and hazy as it seems only to exist in my imagination for now. The arches stand in for my fiancé and I as we wished we could have visited on a 2020 honeymoon that never happened.