Category: Paintings

“21 Jan, 2014” (2017) (my favorite completed painting, to date)

I have a few bold claims and postures about this painting

 

  1. For the past 2000+ years, everyone has misidentified Ursa Major, the Great Bear
  2. No painting ever completed has as its subject a larger total mass than this one.
  3. Chicago should adopt Chi Ursa Major as the official City Star.

Continue reading “21 Jan, 2014” (2017) (my favorite completed painting, to date)

Solstice (2017)

Solstice actually occurs over in Gemini, up and to the right (radiating golden light), but Cancer is the subject, here. Praesepe, the Beehive Cluster, is the jewell of Cancer. In dark, dark skies, it is a barely noticeable, but distinct, fuzzy spot. It has been known since antiquity, always just out of sight, unknowable until telescopes brought it closer. Continue reading Solstice (2017)

Taurus/Pleiades 2017

Acrylic on canvas 2017

A more thorough reworking of Taurus’ famous Pleiades.

The Pleiades are an ethereal, glowing collection of several hundred stars, but just seven B and O spectrum stars are bare-eye visible, and several dozen are binocular-visible, which is the limit used in this painting.  Gobs of space dust are lit by both the seen and unseen stars, creating one of the Northern sky’s great attractions.

Lepus

Lepus, 2017. Acrylic on canvas. Lepus, the hare, is (to Northern viewers) at the foot of (and is the prey of) Orion. With two long ears and a curved back, it really does look bunny like, or Leporidae to pull the Latin. It even scales well to Orion.  It has one nice globular cluster, M79 (Messier 79). Acrylic on canvas 2017.

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