My lifelong fascination with the cosmos led me to explore its depiction throughout my art. Through this painting, I examine our solar system’s position within the galaxy and frame humanity’s accomplishments against a cosmic scale. Viewing the galactic center from Earth’s vantage reveals stars clustering into a river-like appearance that fills the heavens and dwarfs a towering skyline, the pinnacle of our architecture little more than blackened hills rising against a sea of light. Yet, that light began its journey to reach us more than 40,000 years ago, birthed by stars ages before humanity had so much as scratched the surface of our planet. To view time’s cosmic scale in the byplay between humanity’s shadows and darkness and the illumination of the heavens evokes a sense of the unseen – a providence in the weave of eternity that shaped our universe.