MESOZOIC MARINERS

 

Mesozoic Mariners, acrylic on canvas, 2024. 24" X 16.5"

The artwork depicts a Tyrannosaurus swimming past a scenery of marine life from the Mesozoic era. The artist intends to show the breaking of the boundaries between two different worlds, as the T. rex, a land creature, is shown to be able to swim.

This act has been backed by fossil evidence - scientists found both ripple marks and mud cracks in a riverbed, indicating the dinosaur was swimming against a current, and noticed distinct claw marks that stretched 50 feet apart from each other, showing the T. rex may occasionally have paddled long distances through water. Additionally, the dinosaur's hollow bones would have allowed it to swim.

The aquatic creatures in the artwork include:

  • Globidens, a mosasaur
  • Platypterygius, an ichthyosaur
  • Hydrotherosaurus, a plesiosaur
  • Macropoma, small members of the coelacanth family
  • Psephoderma, turtle-like placodonts
  • Hybodus, a primitive shark
  • Pachydiscus, an ammonite 
  • Baculites, long-shelled cephalopods
  • Plesiosuchus, a marine crocodile
  • Nothosaurus, a marine reptile which resembles a swimming lizard
  • Mesolimulus, a horseshoe crab

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COSMIC CONQUERORS [SOLD]

Image
  Cosmic Conquerors , acrylic on canvas, 2023. 30" X 20" In the early days of rocket science, no one knew what spaceflight was like, which is why engineers flew animals into space to test the survivability of spaceflight and learn how to launch and land living beings safely and to better understand how spaceflight might affect human bodies. These efforts paved the way to the subsequent human exploration of space.  Animal space explorers The first animals to reach space were fruit flies, which were launched on Feb. 20, 1947 by the United States. The flies were placed aboard captured German V-2 rockets in an experiment to study radiation exposure at high altitudes. In 3 minutes and 10 seconds of flight, the fruit flies reached an altitude of 68 miles before parachuting back to Earth. The flies miraculously survived the spaceflight. The first animal to orbit the Earth was a dog named Laika, launched aboard Sputnik 2 by the Soviet Union on November 3, 1957. However, Laika died of
Read more

NINE DRAGONS: CELESTIAL PROWESS

Image
  Nine Dragons: Celestial Prowess , acrylic on canvas, 2023. 20" X 20" The artist welcomes the Year of the Dragon with this painting which depicts nine dragons facing an orb of fire.  The painting is loosely based on another painting of nine dragons , which was designed such that there is a central dragon at the center `blowing' Qi. The dragon at the center approaches the flaming orb, and the dragons to the right and left twist towards the center, with each exhibiting different gestures. The dragon captures the essence of the sun and the moon, and the number nine represents the endless positive energy of heaven and earth. The artist includes background elements like clouds, waves, fire and cliffs, with the intent to include the five elements (earth, fire, water, wood, metal) aspect into the painting.  earth - cliffs fire - flaming orb water - waves wood - green color metal - gold color
Read more

LUCKY STREAK

Image
  Lucky Streak , acrylic on canvas, 2024. 20" X 20" The artist welcomes the Year of the Dragon with this painting depicting four young dragons playing a game of mahjong . The black dragon appears to have achieved a winning deck by drawing a 發財 " fa cai " (green dragon) tile, much to the shock of the white dragon sitting in its opposite direction, probably during a lucky streak. It implies a popular case of 食糊 (" sik wu ": winning off another player's discard), where the white dragon may have discarded the " fa cai " tile before it was drawn by the black dragon. The deck shown on the black dragon's side is shown to be "All in Triplets", where in the Hong Kong mahjong scoring rules, the player gets mostly combinations of 3 or 4 identical tile sets (碰 pung for 3 tiles, 杠 kong for 4). The dragons' winnings are shown as gold coins stored in money pots. The artist intended for the black dragon to achieve the winning deck as the bl
Read more