The Planets series, in a formal sense, continued the development of the geometrical structures of the Mass series, which came immediately before. The idea for the series was born, not out of Holst’s Planets, but out of a short piece of music by Sibelius called The Swan of Tuonela. For some obscure reason it suggested to me the planet Uranus. It was then that I conceived the idea of doing a series on the nine planets, using a tonal, light to dark gradation, running through the nine paintings and tying them all together.
