A new abstract painting series inspired by the Okavango floodwaters.

Jul 31, 2026

For this series, I decided to try something new. Six canvases. No brushes for most of it. I lay the canvases down and pour the colors, diluted to the optimal viscosity…not too runny, not too thick. I hold the canvas in my hands and lift it, tilt it, …literally dance with the paint and let gravity do the work a brush usually does. The channels find their own way across the ground the same way water finds its way across sand. Guiding but allowing. That’s the whole method, and it took me a few days of practice to trust it.

I started this series days before we had any real sign the lagoon might flood. Five years of drought behind us. No reason to think this year was different. I was already pouring water across canvas, watching it split and braid and find the low ground, when word came that the flood was actually coming in. A few days later it arrived. Our lagoon, dry longer than it should have, was full again in a matter of days. It is miraculous to witness and highly recommended.

I don’t know if I called in the water through the ritual of painting it, or if it called me. Maybe both. Either way the paintings were already telling the story before the land caught up.

The flagship: The Delta Returns

This one’s the anchor of the series. 78 x 122cm, acrylic. A white channel breaks in from the edge and pushes down through a dense rust network, opening it up, pooling where the ground goes low. It’s the piece where the flood wins clean — water arriving into land that’s been waiting for it. Everything else in the series orbits this canvas.

The others I’m working on also move around it — some cooler, some drier, one where the flood barely reaches the edges and the dry network still dominates. Together they’re the full arc: drought, arrival, saturation, and the land that’s still waiting its turn.

A special for August

I’ve got a group of earlier paintings shipping out of Iowa — works that have been sitting stateside, ready to go. Any of those pieces sold during the month of August ship free anywhere in the US.

And for anyone drawn to a piece $400 or over, from this series or otherwise, I can split payment into two. Just ask when you reach out.

22.3MB ∙ PDF file

More on individual pieces and pricing to come as the series finishes out. For now, thank you for being here to help me celebrate the water coming back.

Looking for more currently available work? Visit biornfinearts.com or reach out to me at matt@biornfinearts.com

Thanks for your support.

-M. Biorn