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This is my new oil-on-canvas painting depicting a zeppelin exploring an airborne wonderland filled with floating air reefs, birds with wings like manta rays and lifestyles like whales, floating “gasbag” lifeforms, and great insectoid hives the size of skyscrapers with vast flocks coming and going to and from parts unknown, all against a backdrop of blue skies and puffy clouds.
The scene is one from my novel, to be released very soon, “Letters from the Airy Deep”, which chronicles a young man and woman falling in love with each other as they explore the wonders of Thalassa, a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri and the nearest planet to Earth that is teeming with life. Indeed, as the painting suggests it’s richer with life than Earth!
Our heroes have closed up their airship, having sealed it against the pressure at these depths, fifty times as high as the pressure found on Earth’s surface, far too great for a human to withstand. This extremely thick air is also almost all oxygen, at higher altitudes where it’s thinner being breathable, making Thalassa the closest planet to Earth where you can breathe the local air.
The boy and girl, named Ilmarinen and Ilmatar, are all alone in their voluminous airship, having plenty of time for love and romance in between their explorations of the alien wildlife. As they journey to both the day side and the night side, the night side an almost surreal wonderland of multicolored bioluminescence lighting up the sky, they see many spectacular creatures, but the real prize they seek is a creature that can not only float, fly, or flow, but also think and talk to them, a cosmic brother of mankind. Will they succeed in making this, the greatest discovery of all time?
Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to stick around to find out the answer to that question! If you’d like to join Ilmarinen and Ilmatar on their voyage of discovery, romance, and first contact keep a sharp eye out for the release of “Letters from the Airy Deep” very soon.
If you like it so much you’d like an art print, a phone case, or even a shower curtain, you’re in luck! You can buy all that and more with this painting on it at my Redbubble page.
