My father left this mortal coil peacefully on March 6 2024 at 12:24pm. I was so grateful I was able to spend time with him a few weeks before he passed away. The time with him was very emotional and priceless and I was able to tell him everything that I was grateful for because of him and that I always remembered everything he ever did for me.
I decided I had an opportunity to turn my grief into inspiration and so the next day, I started to sketch out and begin to paint a watercolor painting for the DFW tribute band “Close to the YES” and inspired by legendary artist Roger Dean, the visionary artist behind most of the YES album covers from 1971-now.
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.
I decided to “lift” a few iconic inspired imagery from some of his YES album covers and other various paintings. This was the first painting I had done in about 7 years and it came together from sketch to finished piece in about two weeks. I only worked on it when I wanted to, but once it started really forming, I had to work on it every day, especially since I had a deadline for the concert poster.
When it came to my concept, I knew that I needed some sort of visual trifecta to connect the images.
I knew it needed to have some wild looking tree with branches and leaves, rolling grass hills, water and blue sky with a hint of clouds. I wanted to have some structures in the distance with a few arches, a giant mushroom building with a curved walkway and a little silhouette of a man standing on the pathway in the distance.
I decided a wanted a 3 eyed cat to indicate we might not be on Earth but some other place, world or dimension. And I wanted a giant butterfly with eyes borrowed from Roger Dean again from one of my YES concert shirts that I love.
The name of this piece is: “The Eyes of Honesty Can Achieve” (taken from the lyrics from “Close to the Edge”, 1972 by YES)