As an artist, Bean conveys the sense of space travel not only through subject and color but also texture. As an astronaut and moonwalker, he can use the tools that once used to explore the Moon to help him put the Moon’s stamp in and on his art.

Prior to painting the image, Bean covers the surface on which he will work with a texturing material. He then uses exact replicas of his Moon boots to make footprints across this surface to replicate the Apollo boot prints remaining on the moon today. Next he uses the same geology hammer he worked with on the Apollo 12 mission to dig into the painting’s surface. Finally, a sharp edged bit from one of the core tubes is used to make round indentations in the surface. All of these come to amazing 3-dimensional life in this striking Fine Art Edition.

With The Source of Intelligent Life, Bean gives us a view that only an artist who has visited another world could have witnessed. “We can see Africa’s west coast to the right turning into the night. Many scientists believe that we are all, even those as far away as South America which is just coming over the western horizon, descendants of a single woman in Africa. Her descendants have journeyed far to make their homes. I’ll bet during her probably brief, difficult and dangerous life, she looked up at the brightest light in the night sky and wondered what it was, never imagining that her children might visit there someday.” - AB