289-green-mars-dixon – cover painting for book two of the science fiction trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I began the painting in 1993 sitting outside Biosphere II in Arizona with “Bionauts” watching through the glass. There are hints of the Biosphere architecture in the painting. A vast Martian canyon landscape undergoes terraforming, featuring a winding river reflecting a distant, low-slung sun or atmospheric laser line, with alpine pine trees taking root along the rugged rocky cliffs and cold foreground slopes. A central vertical montage strip divides the composition, displaying six distinct science fiction scenes from top to bottom: a complex orbital space station, a high-altitude research glider soaring above an orange Martian atmosphere, an erupting volcano venting gases, an industrial terraforming plant with a cooling tower near biodomes, a heavy mechanical walking harvester or crane chassis, and a spacesuited explorer surveying a rugged, pinkish alien hillside. The wide right-hand side reveals an intricate habitat structure built directly into a massive cavern opening within a sheer canyon wall. acrylic on illustration board, overall size 17x21.5 inches, picture area 16x20.5 inches. 1995
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