This is it. This hot glowing cloud of dust and gas here, among these colors, this is where it begins. This is the kind of place where stars are born.
There are places in the universe where the right ingredients and conditions for new beginnings have come together. Dust and hot glowing gases can combine to form dense clouds that will eventually form stars, we call them Stellar Nurseries, and the Swan Nebula is precisely such a place.
Click below to learn about the scale and distance of The Swan nebula, as well as it's composition.
I started this painting on april of 2009, The International year of Astronomy. This was my first attempt at painting the cosmos using oil colors. It was also quite a leap into the unknown regarding technique, I'd never painted with thick textures before, but I knew that was the direction I wanted to explore. Little did I know that I was about to begin a journey through my first series of paintings and childhood memories of stargazing evenings.