The Butterfly Effect

"The Butterfly Effect" - oil on canvas, sort of a 2nd version of a scene I painted for a commission, "Deer Hunting" but replacing the deer with the Florida panther and no hunters.  This was for a show with a "Green" theme including the category Florida wildlife.  The scene is actually one from my backyard except a stream replacing the trail actually there, but with a real stream actually about 20 feet to the right.

So I painted the panther and had it looking up so as to get the light on the eyes, and needed a spot for it to be gazing.  Then I noticed a butterfly shaped spot in the perfect location - I just needed to add a butterfly to replace the accidental shape. The title is also consistent with the green theme, from the expression that a butterfly flapping it's wings in China could cause a hurricane in Florida  - we're all interconnected.  You can't screw up the environment anywhere without affecting everywhere.

Quoting Wikipedia:

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. For example, the presence or absence of a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to creation or absence of a hurricane.