I grew up in the city of Edmonton, Alberta. I was used to streetlights and cars racing by on the roads showing no mercy leaving trails of smoke behind them. The buildings reached for the sky and the city never slept. It wasn’t until I moved to a small town at the end of Highway 105 in northern Ontario called Red lake, that was when I realized that there were more than twenty stars and a moon in our sky. I remember stepping outside at night for the first night and looking up towards the moon and there I faced him and his billions of beautiful friends; the stars. I was so used to the light pollution of the city that I wasn’t even aware that you could see the northern lights if you weren’t directly at the north pole. The feeling was ecstatic and mesmerizing, how I hope people will feel when they see the comparison of how it appears to how it is which really connects to the main theme of this assignment. 
I started by drawing out very straight and geometric lines for the buildings reminding the viewer of concrete, straightforward and the limited ideas humanity has placed upon society and the environment creating a feeling of almost boredom. The colors in the first diptych I used were very gray and dull, executing a solemn feeling and focussing on the brighter lights in the city as the underlying idea beneath all of this is how light pollution (humanity) affects the ability to see stars (nature). In the second diptych, I want to completely block out all the lights and just give the shadows attention with dark value so the viewer kind feels like they are isolated and society no longer exists just the shadows but yet behind these shadows or in the negative space, I really tried to use brighter cool colors to display the soft texture of the organic shaped northern lights and peaceful millions of bright stars giving off emotions ecstasy and wonder. After I finished painting it all I remembered my friend the moon and how he who brought comfort to me wherever I was, was missing from the piece so my final step was to add him. This will overall provide great contrast not only between the shades vs color in the art but to the two ideas - nature vs humanity. For inspiration I used the many photos on google images to see the way the different artists projected the northern lights in the sky. My favorite piece I came across was The Perfect Ride Paintings by Chuck Black. All these components combine to help show and create the implicit connection between reality and disguise in the form of a diptych; how it looks, and how it is and that is my piece.