This is a wonderful example of the somewhat organic direction in which I lead my paintings. This was my first oil painting, begun in high school. I spent several years on the piece, during which time I modified the foreground atmospheric effects (sfumato), and enhanced the cloudy surface of Saturn with the cellular formations as seen in the photographs of Jupiter then being returned to us by the Pioneer spacecraft. Saturn is far more serene than I have depicted it. Nevertheless, if Stanley Kubrick can move the monolith from Arthur C. Clarke’s book, 2001: A Space Odyssey, from Saturn to Jupiter, then I can move Jupiter itself back to Saturn. Hooray me! In a distant future of a sun grown old and swollen, the new, brighter sun may drive winds fresh across the face of the great ringed planet. What was once cold and distant has become hospitable.
A Night Beneath the Light of Saturn
24” x 20”
Early Work
1976
1978
1979
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1980
