3D Martian Landscape

3D Martian Landscape (2002)

Oil on board, 30.5x30.5cm

This is a companion painting to Glow-In-The-Dark Alien Autopsy. Unlike that painting, which does not glow in the dark, the 3D anaglyph here does work to a certain extent. The 3D image was from the 1997 Pathfinder mission to Mars. The image above this to the left is Wiley Post's full pressure suit. Wiley Hardeman Post was a high altitude aviator from the 1930s, and his suit was a forerunner to the modern spacesuit. The image reminded me of 1930s serials, such as Flash Gordon, starring Larry 'Buster' Crabbe, and Charles Middleton as Ming The Merciless. Nothing dates faster than science fiction, as it usually reflects the concerns of its times. For more about early space suits see http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/spasuits.htm . Below is a photograph documenting the Tottenham Outrage, an incident in London, 1909, where a robbery by two anarchists resulted in a long chase; the gentlemen in moustaches are pointing at the spot where one of the exhausted robbers failed to climb a fence, and turned his gun upon himself. Also in the painting, hidden in the top right corner, is a photograph of a crashed airship from the First World War. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, there was a phantom airships scare, analogous to the UFO phenomenon in the USA in the fifties, and this relates to the concern about 'aliens' in Britain in these years: the anarchists in the Tottenham Outrage were, like many other immigrants at the time, Socialists or Communists seeking refuge from repressive regimes.

back