”The Moons of Cougran at Perigee” is an acrylic painting painted by Eric Tilden, completed in the late fall of 2008. It is part of The Epic of Cougran, which is a fantasy novel that tells the classic good versus evil story from the villain’s side. It depicts the villain before he becomes evil, his choice that leads him down the evil path, and his subsequent decisions that further erode his morality.
The subject matter of this painting is a night sky, set over a forest. Four moons hang in the low horizon just above the tree line. The moons on the left side of the painting are smaller, and they are at the half-moon phase. The moons on the right side of the painting are large, and are near the gibbous (almost full) phase. A massive, strange-looking tree towers over the other trees in the forest, having a bush-like lower portion and a coniferous-styled upper portion. Stars and constellations fill the night sky, despite the glaring shine of the four moons in the sky.
This piece is a symmetrical composition. There could be an imaginary vertical line placed down the center of the tree, separating both sets of moons, but also an imaginary horizontal line, separating the sky from the ground.
The moons frame, or enclose the giant tree, forming a giant, obtuse triangle. This same tree reaches into the heavens and supports the roof-like shape of the obtuse triangle, as if it were some sort of truss that holds up the sky. While the bright moons, which vary in size and brightness, exhibit the law of dominance, and act as a focal point due to the light values, the large tree also serves as a secondary focal point to the moons.
The color scheme of this painting is a balance between natural and invented. The reflections on the trees help unite the tops of the trees with the moons, which might occur, but not as obviously as depicted here. The bright yellow moon, low in the horizon, shifts to orange, then shifts again to violet, and then finally to green, as if it is moving about on a color wheel in random order.
The large tree also serves as a mediator to the two massive moons in the sky, as it blends the two reflected light sources into bright yellows and oranges, co-mingling with the tree’s greens like fire would on a forest.
The context of this painting is that it is a scene from “The Epic of Cougran” novel series. It isn’t a specific scene from the novel, but rather, it is an astronomical event where all four moons are at their closest points to the planet. The fact that they are all in the same proximity at the same time, which is extremely rare, makes this scene a once in a thousand-year event, as their orbits are balanced around the planet most of the time.
I really enjoyed painting this piece, along with its twin “The Moons of Cougran at Apogee”, both completed in 2008. I calculated the apparent diameters, meaning, how big they would appear in the sky based on their distance. The moons range from 2 and a third inches in diameter to 7 and a quarter inches. As a point of reference, our moon appears as one half inch, when measured visually with a ruler at arm’s length.
I hope you enjoyed this critique on "The Moons of Cougran at Perigee". If you are interested, you may purchase an art print for $5.00 at the P*JET Store.
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