The Universe is expanding, breathing out, galaxies falling away from one another, space stretched so thin, not enough mass, no gravity, nothing to hold it all together. Every point in the universe finds itself at the center of an exponentially receding sphere, the outer edges screaming away from the center, blinking out as the relative union between the two breaks lightspeed.

The spectral lines of elements emitted from the stars can be plotted. They reveal a shift toward the red end of the spectrum, this shift is an expression of motion, a receding motion. Photons are emitted from energetic electrons, the photons that reach us from the sun light up the day. The photons that reach us from the stars and those distant receding galaxies are coded history. So much can be learned from these tiny packets of information.

My paintings absorb some photons and repel others, I control these interactions by applying various elements to the surface of the canvas. When I want to see red I simply apply a type of cadmium that refuses to absorb red photons and they bounce back into my eye.

If the central form of the painting above somehow became animate and began to race away, the light reflecting off it would stretch out and lose energy, it would take on a reddish hue. If it started toward me, the light would take on a bluish hue.

When two objects speed together, the wavelengths of their reflecting colors contract and experience an increase in frequency and energy; as they speed apart the wavelengths become elongated and dissipate in frequency and energy.

Newton used to stare at the sun. Euclid and Ptolemy thought the eyes emitted rays that, traveling through the light-awakened air, sent signals to the brain, calibrating distance and perspective. Galen, a Roman physician and philosopher, theorized that pneuma flowed out of the body through hollow optic nerves, exiting at the eyes and piggy-backing on the air to “touch” an object. He imagined that the air transmitted a signal back to the eyes, analogously describing the pressure a hand feels when a walking stick strikes the ground. Now we think of everything around us as being illuminated by electromagnetic radiation from the Sun: Photons that have just travelled millions of miles through space and several minutes through time, finally (and nearly instantaneously) touching everything we see before dancing into the greedy little receptor cells at the back of our eyes, which are actually only responsive to a very small bandwidth of electromagnetic radiation.

Light is untethered in space and time. Photons with frequencies, outside of time. No mass. Light describes curved space when it travels in a straight line. It travels billions of years through time without aging.

It takes energy to move through space. It takes energy to exist in space. Nuclear forces combine with electromagnetic forces to hold our bodies together. As these fields of energy move through space they divert energy from time. A causal relationship exists between motion and time. I can't move without time, this I know. But can I pass through time without movement? Our galaxy is careening through space at about a million miles an hour. If it were to stop would we find ourselves then careening through time? Can you ever stop moving?

The painting above has become unstuck in both space and time. It began by moving so fast through space that it stopped moving through time, and subsequently stopped so utterly still that it catapulted through time. It now exists in both the future and the past.

I've added a two-headed serpent looking backward in the painting, casting light that will be seen as red shifted to the observers it leaves behind (yellow here in its inertial frame of reference). Above it a red shifted lightray comes into the frame.

The skull emits a beam of light, it's looking for memories, history, knowledge. Shards of bone, grown in a twisted fashion glow. Inner workings are arranged with Baroque flourish, a codpiece is worn. That nonblinking eye has fixed its gaze forward. Moving madly through time there's no way back. The cockpit is dark.