The Lights of Paradise

In late 1988 I made some larger nebula pictures, rather than the sets of small 7" x 10" pieces that I had been doing. This one here was sent to the World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans, where it was sold and thus disappeared into the void. It's called "The Lights of Paradise," a poetic title for a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by stars and protostars. It's acrylic on illustration board, airbrush with some sponge application and hand brushing. The image is inspired by pictures of the Eta Carinae nebula, an elaborate space cloud full of swirling shapes and lights. This was before the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, so the details of the nebula (and all nebulae) were not clear and finely drawn as they are with current space-based views.

"The Lights of Paradise" is acrylic on illustration board, 16" x 20", August 1988.