Oil, 24" x 24", September 2006.
We might suppose the Earth to be hollow like a tennis ball, with the inside filled with jumbles, floating lakes, and a mysterious pink light emanating from the center. Also to found are shrigs(=shrimp+pig), a flying nautilus, and the Great Old Ones that resemble giant sea cucumbers. The painting illustrates my adventure tale The Hollow Earth, and is based on a drawing by Mason Algiers Reynolds, a 19th Century traveler to the Earth’s interior. Here are some passages where Mason describes his view of the scene:
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“The appearance of the sphere’s very center was as puzzling as before. All lines of sight near the center were warped and distorted, surrounding the center’s blobs of blue with weird halos and mirages. The light there was bright and chaotic and lacked all coherence. Central Sun? Perhaps not. I resolved to call it the Central Anomaly. Earth’s interior was illuminated not so much by the Anomaly proper as by the branching pink streamers of light that stretched from the Anomaly to the inner surface of the great planetary rind we’d fallen through.
“The tangled green band of the miles-thick jungle framed my view down into the Earth’s vast interior. It was pink and teeming with life, shading into mist in the distance. Flying creatures filled the air like schools of fish; here and there, larger creatures preyed on them. I could see three huge shellsquid in the distance. Despite the mist, I could see a good way up the sides of the interior surface around me.”