"Red Rain" was still drying when the name came to me.
I had just finished my first ever multi-color pour — seven, maybe nine colors moving together on canvas for the first time. Every pour I'd made before this had one to four colors. This one was different from the start. More colors, more variables, more trust in the process.
While it dried, I took my dog for a walk. It had just finished raining. And on the pavement, I noticed something I'd seen a hundred times but never really stopped to think about — the oils from cars, sitting on the surface of the wet street, catching the sunset light. That iridescent shimmer. That thin, colorful film floating on water that shouldn't be there, but it is. I was so excited about this one I kept thinking about it.
I went home and looked at the canvas. I thought again, what do I name this? I couldn't get past that shimmer for some reason. The bronze, black, and white colliding near the top left — that shimmer was already in the painting. I hadn't planned it. This synchronicity urged me to collide my first ever red pour with the experience I'd just had.
"Red Rain" isn't about heat or intensity. It's about what rain reveals. When water meets a surface that's been touched by oil, by the everyday movement of the world we've built — it doesn't wash it away. It makes it visible. There's something quietly beautiful in that, and that memory of realization is what this painting holds.
FREEBRD has always stood for positivity and equality all over the earth. "Red Rain" was made in that uplifting spirit before I had the language for it. While on my walk, I was thinking about the plants. About what runs off the street and into the soil after a storm. About the things we don't see until the rain comes and shows us.
As a work, "Red Rain" lives within lyrical abstraction and acrylic pour expressionism — a tradition where the artist guides but doesn't control, where gravity and chemistry are collaborators. What strikes me about this piece is how the movement reads as both natural and disrupted at once. The yellows and golds at the center feel organic, like something growing. The deep crimson and cobalt pressing in from the edges feel like pressure from outside. That push and pull is the whole conversation — and this painting brings it into any room.
I made this around the same time as "Sky Man" — a period where I was making work that came from instinct more than intention. "Red Rain" is the most grounded piece from that phase, even though its vibrancy might suggest otherwise. Literally. It's about the ground, the street, the surface we walk on and rarely think about.
Build your room around Red Rain — start here:
Traditional Red — when this painting goes on your wall, this is the move.
Blackboard — the contrast that makes Red Rain pop. Dark anchor, light everything else.
Miami Blue — for the room that needs one unexpected moment. This is it.
Brownish Red — warm it down. Where the energy of the painting meets the comfort of the room.
Garlic Purple — the undertone you didn't notice at first. Now you can't unsee it. Put it in the room.
Schist Green — grounding. Plants, soil, peace. The exhale after the painting speaks.
Lemon Olive — the edge color. For the person who sees what others miss.
"Red Rain" on the wall is a quiet conversation. The kind that starts when someone stops and asks — what is that? Where did that come from?
Buy this and if that question is ever asked of you, your response: "Beauty and awareness can exist in the same moment — and sometimes it takes a storm to show us what's already there."
Own the canvas and consider building your space around it if need be — the "Red Rain" canvas and Red Rain Essentials are below.
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