Rave partya small and colorful painting

When I was a younger, more wild man about town; I would attend rave parties and dance all night. I loved the music, the lights, the people, and the whole vibe of the event.

This painting of a rave party is an attempt to communicate the ambiance of a wild, hedonistic rave party full of young men and women; high as a kite on drugs, dancing in unison to a throbbing electro-beat. It doesn’t attempt to show abstracted people at a rave party but shows both the sounds and visuals perceived by an individual who is dancing away, with his eyes closed. Someone who is loaded full of mind-altering drugs as they experience this fantastic rave party.

The multi-colored lights flicker. The strobing lights are matched with the tempo of the ground-shaking bass beat of the complex electronic music. Some people are isolated, dancing contentedly by themselves. Others dance in tightly packed groups, full of sexual lust. The musical sound that unites everybody at the rave party is a repeated, hypnotic pulse which starts in one corner of the brain and rapidly passes to the other corner.

The experience is quite a religious one for this person. It is an expression of themselves – a feeling of movement, a feeling of joy, a belief that they are alive and at one with the cosmos.