Complexity Rising, Study

A new detailed study available on Every Day Original tomorrow morning!

We tend to think of evolution as a biological process of rising complexity that began with single-celled organisms here on earth, but the universe has been growing in complexity from the very beginning. 

Before there could be cells, there needed to be complex molecules and a host of elements to make them. The earliest known events of the universe generated only a few of the lightest elements: hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. Until the first stars formed and began fusing protons and neutrons into larger nuclei, the universe was devoid of heavier elements, including the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen of which we are made. Other processes took these elements and bonded them into basic amino acids and other molecular precursors to life as we know it. 

Biological evolution on our planet is thought to be nearly as old as the Earth, but the complexity that made it possible has been accumulating since time began.

Detailed Study, Oil, 6 x 8 inches

 

Magnetosphere Study

An allegory and a little homage to a painting by John Singer Sargent.

 Available tomorrow morning on Every Day Original.com

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 Earth’s 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.

Detailed Study, Oil, 8 x 6 inches

First Magic: the Gathering Card Illustration

My first Magic: the Gathering card illustration was recently revealed. This image is for their new set "The Streets of New Capenna" which takes place in a 1920's themed fantasy world. 

For those who might be interested in purchasing the original art, the auction is live in the MtG Art Market Facebook group until Wednesday, April 19th, 11pm Eastern time.

Mari, the Killing Quill
Oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

A Galaxy Within II, Study

A new tiny painting going up on Every Day Original on Sunday. This is a detailed study for a larger work that will be the second in my A Galaxy Within series.


We are each a little galaxy of our own. It's a mind-bending exercise trying to comprehend the 100 billion stars found in a typical galaxy. Yet, each of us has roughly the same number of neurons in our own brain, performing a symphony of consciousness. Similar too, is the number of atoms that write out our DNA code. We are a staggeringly complex and unique collection of natural components, come together for a short, precious moment.

Large numbers are difficult to fathom, but to be disappointed in the realization that we are “just” collections of atoms moving in accordance with the laws of physics, is to misunderstand the depth of this astonishing complexity, and the billions of years it took to evolve.

“We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws [of nature] … Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world ... It bequeaths to us the responsibility and opportunity to make life into what we would have it be.”
-Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

Oil on Panel, 8 x 6 inches

 

Holiday Small Works

Three new small works appearing in Abend Gallery's 31st Annual Holiday Minitaures Show, now live online!

Taking the opportunity to experiment a little, I painted these three works on Yupo paper, a smooth plastic sheet, which I mounted to panel. The slick surface allows the paint to slide around more, making it easier to get some really interesting fluid marks.

I feel like these pieces convey the sense of an active universe, in which dust clouds are currently swirly and condensing into new stars!

Steadfast
5 x 7 inches, Oil on Yupo Panel

Jovian Night
8 x 10 inches, Oil on Yupo Panel

Flow
8 x 6 inches, Oil on Yupo Panel

Inertia Timelapse Video

Watch me paint the face of Inertia in just over a minute! Well, it was actually about three hours of painting time, but you can watch the whole thing in about a minute. This video has been available to Patreon subscribers for a while now. A new video of Nullius In Verba is now available over there if you want become a subscriber and check it out.

 

Objects orbiting the Earth are in constant, weightless free fall. They are just traveling fast enough that by the time they would have fallen to the ground they have passed, or missed the earth, only to find themselves on another side of the planet falling still.

In order to miss the earth's surface from the altitude of low earth orbit, the International Space Station, for instance, must travel an amazing 4.76 miles per second (7.6 km/s). 

Song of the Universe, Study

One voice sings, “Nothing matters.” We are insignificant specks on a speck in a vast uncaring cosmos. When our sun burns out, billions of years from now, it may be entirely inconsequential what happened on our home speck. A melancholy chord, but it also makes problems feel small and helps us to reevaluate how we spend our time. A reminder to live more in the present moment, rather than always fretting the future.

The other voice incants, “Everything matters!” We are here, now, wrapped in the real experience of our joy and suffering, enmeshed in a web of relations with all life on earth. Everything that we do has consequences that will be experienced by our fellow beings. There is profound purpose to be pursued in the improvement of life for ourselves and others. A melody of unity and goodwill.

Different though they seem, each voice tempers the other and blends in a bittersweet, harmonized hymn: a song of Cosmic Perspective.

A new detailed study available Monday morning on Every Day Original

Oil on Panel, 8 x 6 inches

The Second Kind of Loneliness

A recent private commission to illustrate a short sci-fi story by George R R Martin. The Second Kind of Loneliness is the diary of a lone astronaut stationed at the edge of the solar system to operate a machine that can open a wormhole, the null-space vortex, which facilitates interstellar travel. As he awaits the date of his planned return to Earth, the astronaut writes of the love he left behind there, the beauty and solitude of space ,and his fascination with the vortex.

Oil, 24 x 24 inches

Detail

Detail

 

Stardust VII, Study

New detailed study available Sunday morning on EveryDayOriginal.com

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

This quote from Carl Sagan represents one of the most poetic truths of our scientific reality. That heavy elements that we are made of weren't created at the beginning of time. Only hydrogen and helium came out of the Big Bang. The rest of the elements were created in the nuclear furnaces of earlier generations of stars that have since exploded and spread their material across the universe. We are literally made of stardust.

Detailed Study
Oil on Panel
8 x 6 inches

Detail

Painting A Galaxy Within

A time-lapse that I've slowed down in a few places so you can see some of the marks go down, and see that they don't always go down the way I want them to on the first try.

This has been available on my Patreon for a while but I'm releasing it to the wild and adding a new video there: Painting the Face of Inertia.

 

A Galaxy Within

We are each a little galaxy of our own. It's a mind-bending exercise trying to comprehend the 100 billion stars found in a typical galaxy. Yet, each of us has roughly the same number of neurons in our own brain, performing a symphony of consciousness. Similar too, is the number of atoms that write out our DNA code. We are a staggeringly complex and unique collection of natural components, come together for a short, precious moment. 

Large numbers are difficult to fathom, but to be disappointed in the realization that we are "just" collections of atoms moving in accordance with the laws of physics, is to misunderstand the depth of this astonishing complexity, and the billions of years it took to evolve.

"We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws [of nature] … Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world ... It bequeaths to us the responsibility and opportunity to make life into what we would have it be." 

-Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

Bioluminescence : Tenacity

The light of life and the natural world. Of all the vastness of space, as of yet, we know of only one planet that supports life. At least within some great distance from here, life is rare. Each organism being the exquisite and detailed product of billions of years of evolution, life is precious. The process of science has revealed a luminous, living planet, more intricate and amazing than we could have ever imagined. Let us embrace the light of life in everyone, kindled over billions of years, and combine our efforts to light a brilliant future. 

Oil, 8 x 10 inches

Sold in my Rehs Gallery show last fall. 

Prints: https://robrey.storenvy.com

Ten Mile Range

Earth Day, every day.

A landscape sold in January at my show with Abend Gallery. I felt like painting some clouds when I did this one.

Oil, 16 x 20 inches

Detail

Moonlight

A tiny piece from a group of commissions I did last year.

Oil, 4 x 6 inches

 

Cosmic Awareness

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”

-Carl Sagan


We are part of this universe, not simply within it. We are products of nearly 14 billion years of evolution from an incredibly hot and dense beginning. First, simple atoms of hydrogen and helium had to form as space expanded and cooled. Before a planet could evolve life, these simple atoms had to form stars that would fuse heavier elements. These stars had to burn out in violent explosions that would seed new solar systems like ours with the elements necessary for life. After more than 9 billion years of cosmic evolution, our planet formed and began to evolve life. In this little corner at least, we are the first pieces of the universe with the ability to look out at the night sky and understand it. We are the universe coming to know itself.

Available tomorrow on Every Day Original

Detailed Study, 8 x 6 inches, Oil on Panel

Nebular Nook

This new painting, from an earlier study, has been accepted to show next month in the Oil Painters of America's annual National Juried Exhibition!

In the nebulous dust of deceased giants, new stars are born. Stretching out their new solar winds, these young stars carve out a space for themselves in the dust, just a few million years old.

How many human generations is a million years? It would be approximately 40,000 generations, yet homo sapiens has only existed for less than a third of that time, about 12,000 generations.

Oil, 24 x 16 inches