Life on Mars

One of my first paintings was my version of a cave drawing which was called “Trance”. This showed a village group of women, children & youths, dancing or celebrating while three figures walked away from the group. I took these three figures to be hunters and left them out of my painting, but always intended to use them somewhere. I liked the idea that even in prehistoric days, people had to leave their home base to march off to find food – much the same as a person in the modern world marches off to work every day.At the time I painted the Life on Mars picture, Mars robots were sending back pictures of the planet’s surface. It occurred to me that one day, when man had finally set foot on the planet that he might begin mining exploration, which would involve some men trudging off in a space suits to take rock samples. The idea struck me that life on Mars with 3 men marching off to work, would not be much different that life on earth today with men marching off to work, or from men in prehistoric days performed these same “work” tasks for their tribe. Deciding on the colours for the painting was not difficult as I tried to stay within a possible correct Mars palette. I had intended for the workmen to be dressed in suits resembling Exon blue, which also necessitated adding another tone of ble somether in the painting. As the earth was red, I decided to make the sky gray/blue for contrast.