Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick "The thing that really surprised me was that it [Earth] projected an air of fragility. And why, I don’t know. I don’t know to this day. I had a feeling it’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s beautiful, it’s home, and it’s fragile." — Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Gregg Chadwick Terra Nostra 30”x36” oil on linen 2020  My oil on linen painting  Terra Nostra  was inspired by the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the first photograph taken by a human of the globe from space. On December 7, 1972, the astronauts on board Apollo 17 looked out of their spacecraft and saw the entire earth illuminated by the sun. It glowed like a blue jewel. From then on, our conception of our shared earth changed. Eugene Cernan, the pilot of that flight said to Al Reinert in an interview in Atlantic Magazine: "You have to literally just pinch yourself and ask yourself the question, silently: Do you know where you are at this point in time and space, and in real...

Photograph courtesy NASA From National Geographic: "Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin deploys a foil sheet for collecting solar particles near the Eagle lunar lander in July 1969. July 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Today Aldrin advocates a return to space targeted at Mars and other long-distance exploration missions." I am listening to Clint Mansell's haunting score to Duncan Jones' film Moon . It seems fitting 40 years after Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon that a richly nuanced and psychologically motivated film has been created by the son of the man who gave us Space Oddity in November 1969 in the wake of the first moon landing. The score is available now on itunes : Clint Mansell - Moon - Soundtrack to the Film More on Moon at: AppleTrailers for ipod - Moon