River of Life and Planets

The inspiration for the ‘River of Life’  series came while walking on the beach in Rockport, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico. The sand was littered with shells, bleached by the sun and weathered by the waves. At night the stars and constellations followed timeless trajectories across the sky. I imagined how many planets must be circling those stars and created fused glass discs to represent them. The River of Life painting includes a “Big Bang” in the top left-hand corner, the “Butterfly effect,” the creation of patterns and forms, Mother Earth (represented by the abstract face on the right) and the spiral of a Nautilus. 

All images and text © Marlene Herbst, 2025