Thursday, June 24, 2010

Unquiet Sun



The Sun is not a serene place. It is constantly erupting with explosions of flame and charged particles. Great loops of fiery gas, constrained by magnetic fields, rise above the star's surface and then fall back into the burning abyss. The Sun shoots blasts of particles out from its surface called "coronal mass ejections," some of which reach Earth and wreck our electronic communications. Maybe one of these days the Sun will emit a flare so powerful that it will short out all our telecommunications and return us to the days of handwritten letters on paper sent by postal mail. Then you will receive "Art By-Products" in a manila envelope, if color copiers still work.

I am thinking about this because due to a massive download of so-called operating system updates, my iMac hardly functions any more. Most of my familiar websites are inaccessible and Photoshop runs slowly and haltingly. Fortunately, I was able to get Photoshop working enough to prepare this picture for presentation, and "Art By-Products" was accessible. I am probably going to get a new computer, and put my 2007 model out to pasture. Yes, that is extravagant, but actually the current machine had not been performing well for quite a while, for whatever reason. If there is an interruption in By-Products, the reason will be "migration" to a newer computer.

"Unquiet Sun" is acrylic on illustration board, 7" x 10", October 1991.

1 comment:

Tristan Alexander said...

Very hot and firery looking! Good luck with the new computer, updates and upgrades and new machines always mean everything changes and nothing works how you remember/want it to!