Moondance
40 x 40 in, Oil on Panel
A new painting, now on display in Abend Gallery's current exhibit: Contours of Nature
“In a way, it’s really science that’s been inspiring rituals all along. Beneath the specifics of all our beliefs, sacred texts, origin stories, and dogmas, we humans have been celebrating the same two things since the dawn of time: astronomy and biology. The changing of the seasons, the long summer days, the harvest, the endless winter nights, and the blossoming spring are all by-products of how the Earth orbits the sun. The phases of the moon, which have dictated the timing of rituals since the dawn of civilization, are the result of how the moon orbits us. Birth, puberty, reproduction, and death are the biological processes of being human. Throughout the history of our species, these have been the miracles, for lack of a better word, that have given us meaning. They are the real, tangible events upon which countless celebrations have been built, mirroring one another even among societies who had no contact.”
- Sasha Sagan, For Small Creature Such as We
Prints: https://robrey.storenvy.com
Some detail shots of Magnetosphere
Oil, 30 x 24 inches
An allegory and an homage to Fumée D'Ambre Gris by John Singer Sargent.
In addition to the beneficial warmth and light we receive daily, our sun expels a constant wave of dangerous charged particles called the solar wind. When solar storms occur, flares and coronal mass ejections can be thrown our way at speeds of millions of kilometers per hour. Luckily, movements within earths molten metal core generate a protective magnetic shield around our home planet. Without our magnetosphere to protect us, the solar wind may have long ago stripped away our atmosphere, leaving Earth looking much more like Mars looks today: barren, dry, and lifeless.
Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about our magnetosphere, but it’s one of the many extraordinary things that make life possible on our little world.