Behind the Rainbow Bull: My Most Viral Painting Explained

I Did Not Expect This One

Of all the paintings I have made — the wolves, the lions, the cats, the botanicals — the Rainbow Bull is the one that went viral. And I will be honest: I did not see it coming.

It started as an experiment. I wanted to take the most traditionally masculine, imposing animal I could think of — a bull — and paint it in the most unexpected color palette possible. Full spectrum. Rainbow frequencies from horn to tail.

I expected it to be weird. I did not expect it to become the painting people sent each other at 2 AM.

"The Rainbow Bull is the painting that proves attitude is more interesting than anatomy."

The Technical Challenge

Painting a believable bull in rainbow colors requires solving a problem that doesn't exist in realistic wildlife painting: how do you make impossible colors feel inevitable?

The answer is structure. The underlying anatomy is correct — the musculature, the weight distribution, the posture of a bull that is actively deciding whether you are a threat. When the foundational form is solid, you can push the color as far as you want and the viewer's brain accepts it.

The rainbow is the event. The bull makes it believable.

Why It Went Viral

I have thought about this more than is probably healthy. My conclusion: the Rainbow Bull has attitude. It is not a gentle painting. The bull is looking at you with barely contained contempt, rendered in the colors of a pride flag crossed with a light spectrum diagram. It is simultaneously aggressive and joyful, which is a combination people respond to viscerally.

It also screenshots extremely well. The high contrast, the dark background, the electric colors — they survive compression, thumbnails, and phone screens without losing their impact. That is not a coincidence. It is a design principle I now apply to everything.

What the Rainbow Bull Taught Me

Every artist has a painting that teaches them something about themselves. The Rainbow Bull taught me that I am most interesting when I am least afraid. The paintings I second-guess the most — the ones where I wonder if I have gone too far — those are always the ones people respond to most strongly.