Nightswimming

Nightswimming is my visual interpretation of R.E.M.’s song of the same name. I wanted to paint the feeling of the song rather than simply illustrate it, so I built the surface of the water from pieces of its imagery.

Leaves float across the water and rain falls through the scene. Three Polaroids sit on the surface, each referencing a lyric from the song: a low moon, a 1950s-era car, and the top of a streetlight. The photographs are memories floating in the water, much like the memories the song keeps returning to.

For me, the painting is about that strange feeling of remembering a night so vividly that the details become more real than the present.