Overview Effect (an air of fragility)  

“I spent most of the lock down out of  the city and in the country as we were renovating our house. Each night, we found ourselves going outside and looking at the stars. The moon felt bigger, and the stars were brighter in our Irish countryside. I started reading Frank White’s The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution.

Overview Effect is defined by ‘A cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space. It is the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this pale blue dot becomes both obvious and imperative’

As I was painting this work, I thought of the light in the painting as being illuminated by the moonlight and the flora entering the cyclical rhythm of the night sky.

-Ted Pim