Pal Virag, Nanaimo BC
Member Since November 2011
Artist Statement Pal Virag was born in Hungary, and now proudly calls Canada his home. Throughout his career he has been an architectural engineer, technical teacher, astronomy educator - and inventor. (One of his inventions – a novel solar telescope - was sponsored by the inventor of Rubik's Cube, Dr. Erno Rubik, and was featured in Sky & Telescope Magazine in 2000.)
As a person always seeking new ideas, Pal created a novel multimedia presentation concept in 1993. Focusing on the promotion of astronomy and Canadian space exploration, Pal developed several multimedia shows in the frame of his Travelling Astronomical Education Project (which was operated on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society and funded in part by the Canadian Space Agency) here in British Columbia, Canada.
In the course of delivering his outreach programs Pal had the privilege of meeting Canadian, American and European Astronauts. Upon an invitation by NASA in 2001, he had the pleasure of visiting the Kennedy Space Center and witnessing a Space Shuttle launch, providing him with a life-long inspiration for his work.
Aiming to entertain and educate the audience – generally school students – with visually captivating and informative images, Pal developed his own techniques based on combining elements of real astronomy and space photographs. His goal was to maintain the realism of the source photographs while transforming them into unique Space Art pictures. In order to keep the images authentic, he added very little, if any, computer generated effects to the final products.
As the funds dried up for his science outreach program – and as he became increasingly fascinated by the artistic potentials at hand - Pal thought that it would be a waste to put his skills aside for good. After his presentations the viewers frequently approached him to comment on how unique, colourful and visually captivating the images were. Thus, Pal became motivated to create Space Art pictures that posses both artistic and scientific values.
So, in 2011 Pal founded Bright Planet Art with a solid artistic statement in his mind: to compose pictures that promote responsibility towards our home planet, appreciation of the Universe, and optimism and faith in Humankind and its bright future. By looking at his compositions (with not just our eyes, but our hearts and minds as well) we might see that our beautiful but fragile Earth is a truly integrated part of the Cosmos, our Universe is indeed full of wonders, and our future world will be peaceful, clean and rightful.
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