“Standing in a foreign desert under a vast night sky, the stars seem foreign too. When the moon rises, it is upside down. Why does consciousness insist on the consistency of being? Astronomers tell us the earth and the moon and the sun are all spinning through space at incredible speeds. Yet the evening is still and crisp. I look outwards from this little fixed point somewhere just behind my eyes, as if the self is the only stationary point in the universe. Of course it is not the moon that is upside down, it is me. I sometimes wonder whether painting is a window or a mirror: is it a practice of witnessing the world, or merely expressing my own incomprehension?”
– Arryn Snowball 2024