LIGHTNING DANCE PAINTING

40 × 30 × 2 in

Water-soluble wax on wood panel

There are paintings that arrive easily—graceful, obedient—and then there are paintings like this one. Lightning Dance did not want to be made. Or rather, it did not want to be made the way I expected.

It began as a kind of echo—an attempt to recreate Sky Dance, a previous painting featuring a transparent, dancing Ganesha. I matched the background, gilded the geometric shapes, even formed the beginnings of the deity. But something felt counterfeit. The frequency was wrong. Ganesha, as I experience him, is a presence – a living force. I could have finished the piece. Visually, it might have passed. But for me, it would have been hollow.

So I painted over the figure matching the qualities I felt alive through the presence. Not in anger. Just honesty. And I replaced him — with lightning.

Then the piece went quiet. I stored it, unfinished, for years. It sat in that strange space where art sometimes lives—neither dead nor active, just… paused.

When I finally brought it back into the studio, something shifted. The storm returned, but this time, it had a voice.

I rebuilt the sky from the ground up. The lower atmosphere thickened into deep, surging blues, the kind that carry thunder on their backs. The middle band formed in ultramarine and violet, complex and volatile. And then above it all, the sky surprised me: a sunrise yellow, a sky of fire. The kind of light that can happen after the lightning’s done its work.

In the center, Ganesha returned—but differently. Six-armed, semi-transparent, cast in translucent whites and yellows. He isn’t anchored in one plane; he hovers, in motion, traveling through layers of the sky of the gods. Each hand carries an implement: tusk, axe, goad, lasso, shakti weapon and modaka sweet. These aren’t decorative. They are tools of divine action, each one representing packed sets of forces that the god can wield.

Ganesha is dancing on a translucent net. A web of forces emanated to help people elevate their consciousness and awaken to the giant inside. His feet rock the net in big waves, carrying forces throughout the sky.

His gaze turns away—not evasive, just absorbed. He’s dancing in an eternal rhythm. From the tip of his helmet, bolts of super-mental consciousness emanate, threading the ignited sky.

If you’ve ever meditated long enough, or honestly enough, you might have felt it: razor-wire moments where awareness concentrates. It’s not soft. It doesn’t soothe. It arrives like lightning—clean, precise. Break focus for half a breath, and it’s gone. But if you stay with it, utterly still, something opens.

That’s what this painting is inspired by. That flash.

Lightning Dance isn’t trying to depict a story. It’s reflecting a state. It’s what it feels like when consciousness sharpens to a point and slices through illusion. In this piece, Ganesha isn’t just the remover of obstacles—he’s the bringer of precision. Of rupture. Of that kind of clarity that breaks something open in order to show you what’s always been there.

This isn’t a gentle painting. It’s for those who recognize Ganesha not just as a symbol, but as a presence. For those who know that real transformation doesn’t always whisper—it cracks. It roars. It reorders the sky.

This piece belongs somewhere sacred—but sacred in the active sense. A place of practice, not perfection. A meditation room, a studio, a threshold. Anywhere someone is learning to sit still inside the storm and listen for what’s underneath.

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait…
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

— T.S. Eliot

And here, the god dances.