Aeolis Mons Mars

15”x30” oil on canvas

$1100

This painting is inspired by an image fom the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars. Mount Sharp, also known as Aeolis Mons, is a mysterious mountain that sits in the middle of Gale Crater, rising in the distance while the sloped, layered rocks and hills between us and Mount Sharp are ghostly arid reminders of water and wind and 3.3 to 3.8 billion years of time.

The intent is to create an abstracted landscape that feels almost familiar, and only on further inspection do you realize it is Mars. It was painted with palette knife and oil paint on canvas with abstraction of color, including primarily red, yellow, pink, and blue. Similar to Seeing Mars Through Layers, the not-truely-Martian color scheme represents the myriad of eyes through which we interpret the surface: Curiosity’s camera and filters, computer screens and software programs, scientists’ stretching of colors to emphasize rock compositions, and artistic liberties for aesthetically pleasing richer, brighter and more varied hues. The layers of paint symbolically represent the process that images of the Martian surface go through before we see them, as well as the varied history that formed and altered the rocks, possibly harboring evidence of ancient life.