Oil Paint on Copper Panel

Oahu multidisciplinary artist and educator.

A Brief Eternity explores the tension between the fleeting nature of life and the enduring power of its representation. Drawing from the symbolism and visual language of Renaissance still-life painting, the work depicts a Hawaiian endemic Lispocephala fly caught in the cooling wax of a burning candle. Rendered in oil on a four-by-four-inch copper panel, the fly is enlarged beyond its natural scale, transforming a creature traditionally relegated to the periphery of still-life painting into the central subject of contemplation.

The candle serves as a symbol of time, its flame gradually consuming the material that sustains it. The wax, flowing and hardening around the fly, becomes both a physical trap and a metaphor for the inevitability of mortality. Through realism and the intimate scale of the panel, the work draws attention to the fragility of a life that might otherwise go unnoticed.

By elevating the fly from a minor emblem of decay to the focal point of the composition, the painting reconsiders the traditional hierarchies of still-life imagery and what is deemed worthy of preservation. The fly's existence is brief, yet through the act of painting, its image is granted a kind of permanence. A Brief Eternity reflects on this paradox: the impossibility of escaping time, and art's capacity to preserve a moment long after the life within it has passed.