Updraft Duet

Medium: Acrylic on canvas panel
Size: 8X10 inches
Location: Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, New Nexico
Year: 2024

Painted during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta while in residence at Valles Caldera National Preserve, New Mexico, this piece captures a fleeting moment of quiet spectacle—two balloons rising together, each carrying its own language of color into the open sky.

Stripped of landscape and detail, the composition focuses on form, movement, and color relationships. The balloons feel almost like portraits—individual yet paired—rendered with loose, expressive brushwork that reflects the immediacy of painting on location. The shifting light, the early morning air, and the constant motion of the scene are all embedded in the marks themselves.

This painting is part of a larger body of field work created during the residency, documenting moments from the Balloon Fiesta not as polished spectacle, but as lived experience—observed, translated, and recorded in real time.