The Edicarian Past; Oil on Panel (click to enlarge)

I’ve  recently explored painting inspired by fossil traces of remote geologic periods. The first three of this series cover these ancient spans:

Edicarian; 635–538.8 Mya, during which life forms arose that have no obvious connection with the evolutionary tree that followed.

 Cambrian, 538.8 Mya – 486.85 Mya, during which complex life forms evolved, spurred by a biological “arms race”, to eat rather than be eaten.

Quaternary, 2 .6 Mya to present, during which Man took over the planet, with apparent intent to run it into the ground.

This is abstraction inspired by fact, informed by long hours of curiosity with  the strange visualizations provided by the optical microscope of rock samples, in  this case a Leitz Orthoplan equipped with epi-illumination.

If you stare long enough, you may find representations of homo in all the paintings, justified as the viewpoint presence. Remember that all that ever was lies under our feet; our borrowed atoms the substance of an unknown future.