We are all one with the cosmic dust of the multiverse

I love it when a client/friend asks me to go outside the box and use my creativity. Who said a portrait has to be all about how we normally look? Sometimes I fancy myself to be soaring among the stars. Maija had an idea for something unusual. She wanted to be depicted as a benevolent and light-filled entity. We spoke about being in space, at one with the entire multiverse. I was also looking for a companion piece to “The Next Big Thing,” which explored the idea of God and our place as mortals in an unending multiverse of time and space. So, I asked her to gesture as if she were bringing something new into being. Maija is a very theatrical, yet introspective spirit. She struck just the right combination of simplicity and grandeur. Her humility and grace juxtaposed into the context as a Goddess seemed right to me. They say the specific is what is most universal, so her tattoos and unique jewelry grounded the depiction in reality, though be it heightened.

The rest was placing her in just the right setting. I love to play with light in my work, so I thought about the corona of the sun, the sunrise on an Earth-like planet. I used a lot of splatter effects to create the space dust and planetary objects all around her. In fact, I wanted to make her a part of the dust around her, literally “one with the universe.” All things, even Gods, are part of the cosmic whole. Philosophically, all this aligned perfectly with Maija and my world view. And that is how Goddess of the Universe came to be.