The painting that took forty years to create.

In 1979 I began the initial layers of My Inner Space. I spent over a year on the original piece utilizing painstaking pointillism to build the composition. A million dots were meticulously placed with each one representing a specific point of time and space deep inside the mind. The rest of the work was a meditation of fine detail and shading.

By the mid 80s I started experimenting with airbrush techniques. I decided the corners of the painting should be darker to make the inner radiant bubble more vibrant. The effect worked fantastically but I made a critical technical error by using watercolor paints for the airbrushing. This made lacquering the acrylic underpainting impossible. It was a difficult lesson to learn because lacquer protects the surface from dirt that eventually sinks into acrylic and mutes the colors over time. Because of the watercolor shadows I had to leave the painting unprotected.

The story took a turn for the worse in 2017 when my sons were playing with squirt guns near the art. The water hit the surface and caused the watercolor shadows to drip all along the left side. It looked like a distorted bad trip which was the exact opposite of the theme of peaceful ego loss.

I attempted to clean the watercolor off but the pigment had sunk too deep. The cleaning process unfortunately muted the acrylic colors everywhere except for the very center. Rather than giving up I chose to view this as an opportunity for rebirth. In late 2017 I decided to fully restore My Inner Space by repainting it. I actually felt a sense of relief because there were elements of the 1979 original that I was never totally pleased with.

From 2017 to 2019 I spent my time repainting the entire work on top of the old foundation. I returned to it weekly as time allowed and let the vision finally reach its true potential. After four decades of evolution My Inner Space was finally complete in 2019. Now that it has been professionally scanned I have applied four layers of protective lacquer over the surface. The journey from the small ego into the grand expanse of cosmic awareness is finally preserved.