Magnificent Desolation. 36”x48”; Acrylic on canvas.

I took a photo of this abandoned home in Victor, Colorado and thought of the original audio recordings of Buzz Aldrin describing the surface of the moon as “magnificent desolation” and how it gave me goosebumps to hear his voice describing the moon through the echo and the static. Those are the same goosebumps that I get when I am alone in a ghost town. A sense of omniscient privilege in what was once a city of industry, reduced to rubble and faded placards telling a story to no one. It’s hard to describe that feeling of fatalistic fortune when you’re standing amid something that was once thriving, that has now failed.