Into The Wilderness

 Gideon and Bandy head into the wilderness, from Dinotopia: First Flight.

What inspired this painting were stories of wilding, where animals (esp. condors, wolves, gorillas, and elephants) who were raised in captivity came outside and faced wild Nature for the first time — or humans who lived their entire lives in the city, and then found themselves under the stars.
Apparently it’s a powerful sensory and psychological experience.
Astronauts returning to Earth after a long time in space have said that the effect of a simple bird song is so emotional that it's almost unbearable.

Wordsworth's Idea of Childhood

Poets and philosophers have imagined childhood as an awakening from the sleep before life, or the sleep between lives.

Companions, was auctioned at Heritage for $21,250.00 on Nov. 4, 2025]

Some see it as a transitional phase between the sleep of non-existence and the waking sleep of modern life.

I love the way William Wordsworth put it:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.”

Read the rest on Substack.