Behind the Kaleidoscope: Painting Butterflies
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There’s a word for a group of butterflies. Did you know that? A collective noun, like a flock of birds or a pack of wolves. A group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope.
When I started working on this new series, I knew I needed a name. I was deep into painting butterflies — a dozen or so at various stages on my worktable — and when I came across that word, it just clicked. Kaleidoscope. Color, pattern, movement, transformation. It was exactly right.
Why butterflies?
Butterflies are one of those subjects that feel almost too familiar. Everyone knows what a butterfly looks like. And yet, the more I paint them, the more I realize that familiarity is exactly what makes them so interesting to work with.
You can paint a butterfly true to nature — mimicking the exact markings of a monarch or a swallowtail — and it’s beautiful. But you can also invent. You can mix colors that don’t exist in the wild, create wing patterns that belong to no known species, and end up with something that feels completely real and entirely imagined at the same time. Every painting becomes its own new creature.
That freedom is what keeps me coming back to these original butterfly paintings.
The series so far
The first three paintings in the Kaleidoscope Series — Signal, Emerge, and Jewel — are available now in the shop. Each one is a 12” x 12” original acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas, signed, wired, and ready to hang.
More are on the way. A dozen more, give or take — each one different, each one its own little world.
I hope you’ll follow along as the kaleidoscope grows.