In 2011 I graduated from art academy Minerva in Groningen. It's been a while but I never presented the work well afterwards. I wanted to include this in my projects, because it was a bigger project where I chose the topic and way of illustrating it myself.
I've always been amazed by the starry sky. Being brought up on the countryside (Dwingeloo), it meant we had a clear view of the sky whenever there weren't any clouds in the dark. I've got a telescope as a teenager and I loved visiting our local planetarium (until it closed unfortunately). Later on I liked reading about it when we had sciences classes in school, of how the world came to be and how it is predicted to end, years from now. However, whatever I read or saw, often were just flat scientific renderings, with boring explanations. I thought thinking about the sky was rather poetic and asked for a more artistic expression.
During the research phase of the project, I wasn't sure if I wanted to approach it more with a fantasy/sci-fi theme or if I would try to keep it more fact-based. I chose to tell a short 'story' (or description if you will) of how our world develops in space. I illustrated this in a long illustration that one could show on a wall in 5 rows, or print as a leporello book. The huge width symbolizes to the vastness of space itself.
My plan was to have the art on the wall glow in the dark, however my grading teachers thought this was rather a childish approach and recommended me not to work with a 'dark' room, or a curtain of some kind. Too bad because working with the pigment during the concepting/research part was really cool, and I still don't agree with my teachers reasoning.
