“Tourists at SpaceX Starbase”

The piece features Starship #24 on Booster #8 at the pad. The system which is set to go into orbit for the first time in 2023, and then onwards on to the Mars Mission in a few years! It also includes another Starship that was either waiting testing and the semi-crumpled R2D2 looking Starhopper initiated Starship testing.

I’ve definitely been one of those individual’s getting excited about space travel again along with SpaceX’s successes the last few years. I drove 8 hours down from Dallas in November 2022 to SpaceX’s Starbase literally right on the Rio Grande in Boca Chica by Brownsville, Texas.

The piece also includes ME en plein air painting there onsite, photographers, and other general tourists. A crow or blackbird as the area is near a wildlife sanctuary, lots of cryogenic tanks filled with liquid oxygen and methane, a Tesla, my Acura, and sand reeds, sand and a clouds flying by as the site is SUPER windy! Painting there was one of the most difficult environments I’ve ever encountered perhaps besides capturing the Brooklyn Bridge from DUMBO, Brooklyn in February.

I enjoy capturing atypical scenes and paintings of space travel is certainly a rare topic for oil painters.

I arrived at night and took a few pics and video at in the dark and then returned early the next morning to take more daylight pics and start an en plein air piece off the trunk of my car. After about an hour sketching and starting the underpainting we ‘space tourists’ were asked to leave so SpaceX could run some tests without anyone getting hurt. The system did make a few hissing noises moving gasses about so I didn’t have to be asked twice.