"Borodin's Steppes" is the third of my "Music as Paintings" series.

It is my interpretation of "In the Steppes of Central Asia" composed around 1880 by Russian composer Alexander Borodin.

I had several iterations of conceptualizing this music. While re-conceiving the music as a painting, I created several versions, though each had red and blue to depict the main musical themes, and earth-tones for the secondary theme. Red is used to depict the "Russian" theme, blues depict the "Eastern" theme, while green and brown depict the "Traveling" theme. The yellow and metallics are inspired by the various grasses and sunshine found on the steppes. The Russian and Eastern themes are beautiful as individual themes, but the brilliance of the music, at least to me, is how glorious they are while played concurrently after the climax. This interweaving of themes lead to my use of purple to symbolize the coming together of red and blue. Finally, the music itself is loosely depicted (in copper) as well, the Russian theme heard first is in the upper portion of the canvas, the Eastern theme heard later on the lower portion, and the traveling theme is in the middle. This music is one of my favorites.