Large format, oil on canvas painting. Painted in the Pawtucket studio in 2021. This painting took longer than most to arrive at it’s finished state. There were points in the process when the greens tangled through the middle of the painting, making it much more dense. Ultimately, more space was needed to breath and those dense, dark colors to the edges - the periphery. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, the meditative idea of clearing space, making room to breathe, etc. This gets at the heart of what the paintings of Michael Rich are about, creating space through color and light to enter, to breathe and be aware of where one is standing.