Ornithopter

16″ X 24″ Acrylic on Masonite. This got very little exposure. I did it in late 1993/early 1994 right as I was going into my “Trap-jaw” palette phase.

I had read Dune several times since discovering the book in 1969 but had yet to find an ornithopter that I liked… so I came up with my own. Using chartreuse as the Atreides green house color might be pushing things a bit, but not nearly so much what I did with one of the moons. According to the book there was a “mouse in the moon” instead of a “man in the moon”; if you check carefully you can find a Mickey silhouette in one of them.

I only had the painting for a year–a good friend took it as down payment on the metallic blue “waterboxer” VW Vanagon that we drove the wheels off in the late 1990s….