Original artwork description:

‘we are stardust, we are golden...’
Acrylic and gold paint on canvas 30x30 inches
The line from joni mitchell’s song is literally true.
The gold and blue swirling around the male and female couple is inspired by the veil nebula in Cygnus, based on photos i took with a 14 inch telescope

Inside these stars are created the everyday elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc etc which our bodies are made of, and further [in the explosion] the heavy elements like gold, silver, lead etc When such a star explodes, these elements are thrown out into the universe, drifting into the nebulae in which new stars are born
Out of such a nebula our sun was born containing these elements, and from our sun the earth, and from the earth all life
We , and all life on earth are literally made of stardust


The couple are based on the drawing sent into space on pioneer 10 in 1972. Reaching the minor planet Pluto in 11 years, it is now beyond the solar system, going towards the star aldebaran in Taurus, which it will reach in about 2 million years. The 2 figures, along with other information about ourselves, were sent in the small hope that alien intelligence may one day see it and learn about where it came from and about ourselves.
Hilariously, the drawing was greeted with howls of ‘obscenity’ from certain quarters ...the degradation! Sending pornography into space! it reminds me of that episode of the muppets where the eagle, that bastion of prudery and morality, realises to his horror that everyone , including himself, is naked under their clothes! Even more hilariously, nasa in their wisdom decided not to show that females have reproductive organs like males, and left that area blank!

the canvas was first covered with black 3.0, 'the blackest black on the market'. it is certainly v black, maybe not as black as they say

Materials used:

acrylic , gold paint