Are we alone in the universe?

Oil on linen, a wide panoramic canvas divided by immense darkness. In the lower left foreground, close and tactile, a rocky Earth tide pool at twilight: wet black stone built with palette knife, shallow water holding pale blue reflections, and along its edge a thick impasto mat of green-gold microbial life with tiny rising bubbles. The center and upper expanse is near-black space, thinly glazed, scattered with hard white stars and a barely visible nebula. In the distant upper right, much smaller, an alien shoreline under a dim red sun: rust-colored rocks, a dark still sea, two thin moons, and along a far tide pool the same unmistakable luminous green living edge. No people, no spacecraft, no signals, no words — only two living shorelines echoing each other across an uncrossable gulf.