Mare Tranquillatatis

~Bad Poetry~Pen Brush Sword~Thoughts and Dreams

Oct. 24

Named after a 'sea of the moon' a large expanse of relatively unblemished space on the moon. The name of it should be rather self-explanatory. The original title of this was 'A Ti Apart.'

The general sensation of how this came into being was an expression of how I generally feel about people and my sense of comfort in a hyperbolic setting. The point of it being a lunar setting should make the other-worldliness come across rather sharply and the view in the background seems to me iconic enough to translate well. Hopefully the narrative at work here serves - as I intended - to express a sort of visual maxim of my introspective position relative to how I look up to, or even perhaps away from the world.

I tried to make a deliberate effort of limiting use of grays, resorting to as much high-contrast use of shape to generate a sense of form. The large shifting from black to white and black again was to also buttress that sense of absolute and definite stark details where everything is laid bare and impossible to ignore no matter how small. It is a matter of how much value the conceit of knowing oneself requires that we be, to ourselves, laid completely bare. I want the point of this use of light to evidence that there is a world of absolute black and white, right and wrong, sight and blindness. But the grayness, the blending and compromise is purely an unnatural element and something that thinking creatures introduce into our worlds, be they worlds in our minds, or the real world itself.

The framing is also important, showing a plain of substance forming an endless expanse of pearl-white reality, undeniable in its sheer weight. The character with his back turned from all the elements present; the light, the dark, the damage. The earth.

He is consumed, absorbed with something hidden from the viewer, out-of-frame and shamelessly hidden. He is an alien appearance on the impossible, barren, motionless, cold and unfriendly lunar surface. Unknowable. Unreachable. Consumed. Lost under an impenetrable canopy of inky blackness where the tranquil heavens, the scene of serene balance on the pure-white surface is mirrored by the neglected orb is offensively suspended millions of kilometers away and unreachable, consumed, and lost in uncompromising grayness.