A couple of things intrigued me about this image when I first saw it… somewhere. I don’t recall where. But it stuck with me. I made a sketch of it.

It’s of a gas station at night, possibly after a rainstorm. Nothing’s going on. But maybe something’s about to. Or something just did. There’s a tension to it. The bright, greenish artificial light against the dark blue, wet night. The place is all lit up. Waiting.

That’s the first thing. The image elicits a story. Or, at least a feeling. Tension. Expectation.

The composition is simple. The station’s complex geometric roof dominates. The underside of the roof resembles a flattened lightening bolt reaching for the flood-lit middle. Pumps, corporate robots, wait to serve. And then, across the bottom, it’s all blurred out, washed away in reflective puddles.

So I had to paint it.

The second thing was how to paint it. It is a challenge. There’s subtle colors and shades in the painting that a pixeled JPG doesn’t register. Bright whites and nearly black darks. Overall cool, even cold colors with stabs of not-quite-warm reds and yellows. Eerie greens. Hard edges, soft blends.

There’s a story here.