I created this piece as part of a small Exoplanet Series that emerged while I was reading The Smallest Lights in the Universe, Sara Seager’s memoir of grief, discovery, and the search for worlds beyond our own. Thinking about the possibility of countless exoplanets—and reflecting on Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”—left me humbled and full of wonder. It also stirred the dreamlike landscapes I often carry with me from long, mysterious nighttime journeys. The circular surface felt like the perfect place to explore those imagined worlds, a shape both sacred and expansive in my contemplative studies.

As with much of my work, familiar symbols appeared intuitively: the red ladder-shape that feels like a DNA strand stretching upward, and the tree on the right—always a wisdom keeper in my visual language. I loved twisting the brush to create the blue forms over the green-gold terrain, as if I were mapping out a strange new geography.

This piece, one planet from the series, is part dream terrain and part universal spiritual symbol—a small imagined world holding wonder, mystery, and the fertile ground.