The Creation of Rainbows 1988

Boris Vallejo fashioned this fantasy world using paint. It features a muscular figure reaching up as if to support an arch of people morphing into each other as they reach for a ray of sunshine, creating a rainbow. I can imagine Vallejo deeply focused, layering, and blending those colors, moving from earthy tones at the bottom to these radiant hues above. He really celebrates the human form as he composes this magical scene. Those figures flow so seamlessly from one to the next, I wonder if he was thinking about transformation and interconnectedness. The whole image has a dreamlike quality, like something you might glimpse in a fantastical vision. Vallejo makes paintings that sit between realism and total fantasy, inviting us to consider the relationship between our bodies, each other, and the world around us. Artists are always in conversation, borrowing and remixing. So many works explore the rainbow, and Vallejo makes his own, adding to the conversation.