Heart of Gold was painted the weekend Jimmy Buffett died—not on purpose, but the colors came anyway. The work carries that strange emotional current: not quite grief, not quite celebration. There’s a heart-shaped scrap of gold leaf embedded beneath the surface—hidden, but there. Like a compass you can’t see but trust is working. Like a song that only means more after someone’s gone.
The top half moves in sails of sea-green and sunlit chartreuse, restless with vertical energy, wind-caught. Beneath, a grounding band of crimson and coral holds steady—a ballast of memory, of warmth, of what we carry with us. A faint horizontal line suggests the edge of sky and sea, or maybe the horizon of something once believed and still hoped for. Fine marks, almost like celestial signals, are scratched lightly into the green above—a navigation chart or the Southern Cross itself, waiting for those who know to look.
 
This is a painting about charting your own course in the wake of change. It’s about what gets stowed and what gets left behind. It wonders aloud how we find our way when the stars shift—and whether carrying a heart of gold is enough to get you home.