Colors
This painting is my attempt to capture the joy, movement and energy I felt while listening to
“Colors” by Black Pumas.
9 July 2026
This piece is the first in what I hope will become a series of musical artworks.
The idea came to me while listening to music. One song in particular struck such a positive chord that I found myself wanting to paint the feeling it created rather than the lyrics themselves.
The song is “Colors” by Black Pumas.
To give a little context, here is the chorus that inspired the painting:
It’s a good day to be
A good day for me
A good day to see my favorite colors
Colors
My sisters and my brothers
They see ’em like no other
All my favorite colors
To stay connected to that feeling, I listened to the song on repeat while I painted. Saying I listened to it at least thirty times during a single painting session is probably an understatement. The fact that I still enjoy hearing it says a lot about the musicians who created it. There are very few songs I could happily listen to that many times in a row.
The painting began easily. Broad sweeping strokes of reds and pinks became the sunrise, while a soft blue sky reflected the lyrics.
On the left, I added vertical streaks of color to represent an abstract gathering of all my sisters and brothers. Rather than painting literal people, I wanted the figures to feel like movement, togetherness and shared energy.
Then came the meadow of green, the shade of the trees and the tiny blue bird flying overhead. I used my fluid art techniques to create the trees, allowing them to remain organic and full of movement. Most of these elements poured out of me easily.
I really liked what I had created thus far, but I knew it wasn’t done. The energy of the song didn’t match the energy of my painting…yet!
I asked my son to listen to the song while looking at the painting. His suggestion was wonderfully imaginative: a man sitting beneath the tree playing guitar.
Next I asked my husband. His vision was completely different. He imagined making the figures more literal and adding a winding path leading toward a distant city.
I explored both ideas, sketched possibilities and sat with them for several days.
Neither felt right.
Instead of committing too quickly, I applied two coats of Golden Soft Gel Gloss as a barrier layer. It gave me the freedom to experiment, knowing I could remove anything I didn’t like without damaging what was underneath.
That simple decision completely changed my mindset. The guitar, the path and the city all felt too literal. I wanted the painting to remain open to interpretation.
Instead, I covered the canvas with hundreds of colored dots. They become denser near the ground and gradually fade as they rise into the sky, almost like musical notes drifting upward. For me, they captured the energy, movement and sense of community that the song created inside me.
I loved the new direction. But even then, the painting still wasn’t finished.
Although the trees were interesting, they had become too green and visually dominated the composition. They quietly bothered me for almost a month before I finally picked up a brush again.
I softened the foliage, repainted the trunks with layers of warm browns and subtle blue-gray tones, then added another scattering of colored dots to weave the trees back into the painting instead of allowing them to stand apart from it.
That was the moment the painting finally felt complete.
One thing I have learned through creating art is that inspiration doesn’t always arrive from looking at other paintings. Sometimes it arrives through music. Sometimes through conversations with family. Sometimes through experimenting with a new technique. This painting became all of those things at once.
If you have a few minutes, I hope you’ll give Colors by Black Pumas a listen.
I’d love to know what the song makes you feel.
Colors 41 × 33 cm