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Everyone has seen a jet airplane's "contrail," the streaks of whitish vapor an airplane leaves across the sky after it has passed.

What kind of contrail would a dragon leave across the blue-black night? Surely one almost as fantastic and magical as the creature itself.

This is a work of abstract expressionism, meant to be nothing more than an arrangement of paint on canvas. But after I finished it I found myself thinking about magic and myth and a dragon's contrail. And so I named it "After the Dragon Passed."

This is one of my favorite paintings. It's a "pure" abstract, nothing more than an exercise in color, proportion, balance and design. It's not meant to look like anything.

But the sea-greens and sea-blues inevitably reminded me of the ocean, and as soon as it was done the old saying "between the devil and the deep blue sea" popped into my mind.

This is a "pure" abstract, not meant to represent anything. Some people see a house in the bottom design element. I see it too, but it was not intentional.

What I love about this painting is the intensitiy of the "warm" colors - the reds and oranges - in contrast to the "cool" blues and blue-greens of the background. I also like the visual energy of the "brushstrokes," which weren't actually made by a brush at all, but by a palette knife.

The color contrast, to me, makes the intense warm colors look as hot as "Dancing on the Surface of the Sun."

It's late at night, you're tired and your vision is a little blurry. It doesn't help that it's raining, and your windshield wipers aren't working well. It's dark outside, and the road is an endless stream of traffic signs, roadhouse lights and motel marquees.

I had no such thing in mind when I was painting this, but when I was done it looked to me like Route 66, the legendary "mother road" that led from Chicago to Los Angeles, back in the day. It's mostly gone now, but it lives on in two different, equally fantastic songs by the same name.

There's a red element in this piece that looks a little like a flag or a pennant, so I had to call it "Let Your Freak Flag Fly."

Then I got to thinking, where the heck did that phrase come from?

I did some Internet research, and the earliest reference to a "freak flag" I could find was from the immortal Jimi Hendrix, in a song called "If Six Was Nine":

Questions? Comments? Just want to say hello? Please e-mail me at: Lance@PorterArtGallery.com, or give me a call at 235-5559.

All the best!

Lance Porter

Copyright 2008, Lance N. Porter