Earth Project
When I was a kid, I checked out a book called Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton. It was published in 1962, it featured folk art illustrations depicting the history of the Earth using a stage motif with acts in a 5-billion-year play. Like a lot of kids, I was fascinated by dinosaurs and space, long spans of time, big stuff, and super little stuff. Life Story brought coherence to these concepts, laying a foundation for ongoing study and contemplation to the present day.
A few years ago, I decided to embark on a book project inspired by Burton’s 1962 book. Notionally called Earth: An Artistic Journey Through Time, it may or may not get published. That’s not really all that important to me. Instead, I like the idea of producing pieces capturing scenes from each era, epoch, and period of the geological timescale starting in the unofficial Prenephalean 6 billion years ago. This equates to at least 70 individual pieces. Generally, I don’t want to embellish too much, as I feel nature is already magnificent. So I intend to be modest when rendering scenes, trying to capture the idea that even though we naturally think of prehistory as exotic, strange, and other worldly, these things are in fact part of our story.
I’ve only executed six so far. Good luck to me…
