This poem was written and posted on Facebook in 2018 at the time I completed Mars and displayed it at the "Autumnal Gathering". I don't think there is a direct connection between the poem and the painting. I think I wrote the poem just for the hell of it. However, for presentation on this site I have combined the painting and the poem. It was a small experiment in AI art generation. I gave the words to Google Gemini and asked the bot to produce the sections as "ransom note" dada/punk text. The bot got carried away and made all sorts of little collages to illustrate the text. This I have overlayed onto the painting. You can see the results in the gallery below

Poem:

Molten coagulation of the female exoskeleton. Manichean mannequin of the fertilizer factory. Golden Cheez Whiz on Lapis Lazuli palanquins. Moth butter and water cooler antiquarian Venus. Nerd rocking chair with permanent cheerleader. Roofing tar kid gloves and fairy wing kiss asses. Narcoleptic metropolises of fervently preying mantises. Fourth tater breathalizer mint bloodberry whoopee cushion. Incisors and tree rings that multiply by firelight. Fearless leaders of carnivorous compost piles. Calculator sex manuals with pop-up marzipan pigs. Porcelain nincompoop categorization theories are incorrect. Schizoid flowers blossoming syringe tongueless eyes. Bridges of alloyed hopes and forged meat locker talk. Shivering dildo of the pale moonlit surface of Mars. Cigarette cases for ventriloquist streetwalkers stumbling. Stitched up pancakes of nefarious fig trees. Dissimilar infections as chartreuse tuxedo mourning. Bourgeois tornado and prize winning tomato throw up. Ketchup cartoon characters torn out of Bible class for hot fudge sundaes. Gulliver's travels and lawnmower repair with broken hood ornaments. We have to share the same toupee - I'm sorry to inform you. Crisscrossing the switchblade aisles of shutdown shitholes. Nervous children on their way to the exterminator's birthday party. Cordiality cordial vs. elixir of excellence in the classical Mountebank's mountain range of monotonous monologues. Strident epilepsy peptalk at Asgard University Students Association seminar on double date strategies for the retired firemen's cotillion. Broken, broken glass everywhere and not a shard to think. Too many times have the armories been depilated of their retinue of knuckle dragging serving girls. Busloads of curiosity seekers arrived early in Babylon. Posing for photos while the world splits in half. The upper crust was burned by the sunlight in a bottle. I left you a message, but you pretended I didn't. Gradually, many of the fingers fall off the caterpillar. The Chrysalis embroidered with charities, the stupid grin of insincerity, the silver lining on turds floating across a clear blue sky. Free porn as political reform; ankle bracelets, tire irons, treadmills, titty bars, tarantula tamers - a dozen for a dollar. There was a man that fell from an airplane, crucified on the space-time continuum (whatever that is), and as he fell from grace, he opened up a laundromat and did all of his own laundry before hitting the ground, going out of business immediately, and then having to open his own hospital to treat his own injuries, and pay taxes - poor business strategy overall, but commendable effort, don't you think?

These images are a collection of early sketches and collages assembled as initial project proposals. The Mars painting began with neo-classical sculpture as the template. Composite objects were then added to the composition before it was redrawn. Color was added as the image was refined. Once the sketch was completed, the image was ready to be rendered by hand painting. Further refinements were made during the hand rendering process. For me there is a certain magic in working by hand in traditinoal meia that computer graphics, while expedient and more flexible, simply cannot match in grace. In the process of transferring and painting, I anticipate inventions and embelishments that cannot be predicted by looking at the original digital collages.

Here is an earlier rendition of a Venus painting. Linked to Mars thematically, and both the result of a larger Pantheon Project