Mystery: In Space
Gregory (17)
Cotswold School, Bourton-on-the-Water

My piece is a 'Digital Painting', made using my Graphic Tablet and Adobe Photoshop, adding (I feel) an air of realism. The piece is all of my own drawing and not an edit of a photo as Photoshop may imply.

I think the universe is a huge mystery and in the words of Bertrand Russell, all you can really infer is that 'The universe is just there, that's all'. The picture is of space and the curvature of the earth, to emphasize that we are only one planet in this huge universe. How did we get here? Why do we exist? Do the answers lie somewhere in the universe or only beyond life? I drew a modern young woman floating in space, left open to the viewer's interpretation. The ethereal glow around her hints at the other worldly: dead and floating to heaven, or maybe after leaving her body and floating through the skies where 'heaven' is classically depicted, she reached space and there is no heaven. She is almost shrugging as if to say she doesn't know or another view could be that she is showing you the universe behind her, God's creation. Her pose is similar to Jesus' crucifixion: maybe one day science will advance enough for us as humans to ascend to a higher plane of existence and intelligence and do the seemingly impossible things Jesus could do.