March 29, 2010

Exoplanetary Inspiration Through An Artist's Eye

Just a few moments ago, my wife showed me a book she picked from last saturday's trip at a huge Flea Market somewhere in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. The book which was printed in 1988 is entitled Devis Grebu, Through an Artist' Eye. It was a showcase of the Romanian-born painter, cartoonist and graphic artist Devis Grebu whose work was mostly on watercolor and color pencil. I thumbed through the pages, provoked to see some more of his whimsical and seemingly paradoxical illustrations at each turn of the page.

Then suddenly, many of his "otherworldly" paintings began to catch my attention. I realized that they actually have some context in relation to this exoplanetology blog I maintain! And so before I knew it, I was hurriedly writing up this post amidst all the chores I still had to do.

Way back in 1988, the folks probably had no idea that we would have more than 430 exoplanets by 2010. But it seemed that Devis Grebu had a hunch that the human race would be learning about other worlds. With that thought, I simply just had to write this up.

Around 10 of his works featured in the book had planetary connotations (happily mixed among provocative ones), and are quite inspirational to say the least. I show only a couple here that I found quite the most meaningful among the set that I deemed to be "exoplanetary". What really prompted me to write this post was the last page which showed the "green" and titled "The End of The Journey". The contemplative context written about the painting turned out to be quite inspiring to me, even though I don't play golf!

"Two legs firmly planted on the green. The club ready to tap the ball into the hole. But what hole? What ball? What green? Where is the game being played? And who is playing? A god, tired of his creation and opting for a final solution? Or some searcher looking for a new field of thought, an opening for a new start? In this big game called Anywhere Out of This World, each player must find his own way to end the match."