Blue Morpho

22 in x 22 in,

3/2024

A colleague in Philanthropy from the Kentucky Children's Hospital asked me to consider painting a blue morpho butterfly to be used to help raise money for the Simpson family theater in the hospital where I work. This theater was named after a young lady who passed away after a brave and valiant two-time battle with cancer, and her wonderful family supports our efforts to help improve experiences for other children and young people. The painting, as I understand it, is to be raffled at an upcoming memorial walk in honor of this young lady who loved butterflies, and none more than the blue morpho, a shimmering and impressive large butterfly from central and south America. To do the piece, I found a good photo of a blue morpho on-line, blew it up in proportion to match the size of canvas I had in mind, and then stencilled it out on the canvas. I chose a background made up of pastel diamonds whose colors somehow reminded me of the young lady being honored. The butterfly itself is made up of more than two dozen different blue hues, mostly metallics to give it a shimmer, and graded so that the blues were lighter in the center and darkest toward the periphery. The painting was raffled off at a fundraising event, and won by Toi Morton, a friend of the family of the young woman being honored. Interestingly, she ended up donating it to the Kentucky Children's Hospital, and they decided it should hang in the pediatric heme/onc infusion room named after this special patient of ours, so ironically, it now resides less than 30 steps from my office at work!