“The Bolero Shield”, from the Early Work Archive

This is one of my first attempts at oil painting, from nearly 25 years ago. The concept comes from an episode of the original Outer Limits series.It was an episode I remembered seeing once, but hadn’t seen in over a decade, so my interpretation of the alien was not intended to be at all faithful to the original (see below).

As I recall recalling, the alien slid down a beam of light into some people’s home. I’m guessing the man must have been a scientist toying with the unknown, the way you could in the 60’s imagination, just by turning some dials and manipulation frequencies… The alien creates a force field around himself by pushing a little button in the palm of his hand, but, at some point the wife somehow entices him to open the force field and she manages to cut the vein connecting the button to his body. Well, that’s the way I remembered it. This is one of a few images I did loosely bases on sci-fi movies I remembered from my childhood. This seems a bit odder over 20 years later.

When I was a kid I was completely fascinated by sci-fi. When the new TV guide would arrive, I’d pour through it and underline every sci-fi movie so I could try to watch them. The Outer Limits was among my very favorites, because it was so weird, eerie, scientific, and mysterious.

I’ve recently acquired the whole series, and when I watch them now I can see why they appealed to me so much, and it is really the belief that just beyond the suburbs of the picket-fenced, baseball and apple pie America, one could reach out somehow and connect with something entirely alien and unknown.

In my interpretation from back in the day, I’d humanized the creature a bit and was drawing obvious parallels between the alien and the savior (a theme I come back to now and again).

Below is a close-up of the head.

 

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This painting is on sale for $1,500. If interested follow the link above, or use the contact form below.