"As the Dragon Breathes"
Images of energy and a few other items. Where some of them came from I'm not exactly sure. They just seemed to show up in the doodling. As I was just beginning to apply the initial wash of umber, my son came into the studio and asked, "Hey Dad why don't you paint some lava just coming right out of the ground". It must of stuck in my head along with related imagery. I would have to say that I was primarily concerned with heat and energy. The small sphere is releasing energy through the cracks in its surface. The heat from the overall scene is transmuting the water into steam or clouds but as it is being transformed it also takes on the shape of flames. There is another butterfly (with the same coloring as the dragon) above the orange butterflies with the shape of a caterpillar for the body which symbolizes another energy release as a butterfly emerges from a cocoon. In retrospect I guess I should of made that transition more evident. The section above the cracking sphere is supposed to resemble a quasar or quasi-stellar energy. Using pictures from the Hubble space telescope as references. But I never like to copy references exactly as that kind of ruins the feeling of self expression one is supposed to get from painting. I am not to sure where the purple spheres came from unless I was thinking of another painting I did that also uses heat as a theme of sorts and that would be "The Next 4 Billion Years". The pyramid is just a geometrical shape I find myself doing from time to time. I had originally titled this piece "The Release of Energy", 
Acrylic - 24" x 36"
See detail below.