LAND IS SAFE NO MORE

LAND IS SAFE NO MORE – “1st Prize Winner” at IV Italian Paleoart Prize 2024, Montevarchi.

I was planning to paint a Dimetrodon for about a year and a half. But I couldn’t find any striking idea or any interesting interpretation for this taxon, besides the fact that in pop culture is naively seen as our “great-great-great-great grandfather”. One thing was clear, I wanted to do a portrait.

Fast forward to the beginning of August 2024, I was checking my sketches (taken in the passed year) with my girlfriend and the right idea for this painting stroke like a thunder: what if I’d try to portray Dimetrodon from the perspective of a hidden, small critter?

I had so much enthusiasm for this idea that I remember that I painted the rough stages of Dimetrodon (the stages before scales and integument), and the background in like two days.

Life begun in water, and waters have always been a hive full of predators. Having the ability to escape on land used to be a strategic ability, at least before the Carboniferous, when the first fully land predators started to appear.

Dimetrodon, that lived at the beginning of the Periman, represents one of the first full-land adapted superpredators. It could reach in the larges species 250 kg and the length of 4.6 meters, size that was close to the limit of any other land predator during the Periman period (with the exception of some Anteosaurini).

And adult Dimetrodon could have any prey in both humid and more arid environment, the sign that Land was safe no more.

This painting won the first prize in the IV edition of the “Italian Paleoart Prize” promoted by @museopaleontologicomontevarchi @paleoappi and @paleoarte.

I thank all the organizers and jury for this award, that means so much for me.
Big thanks also to @antonio.dime for the great teamwork we always do, this prize is as mine as is yours.
Thank you all for the support and love you’re showing me both online and in real life

If you’re interested in commissioning me a similar painting or to buy the licensing rights of this artwork, feel free to contact me at simonezoccante@gmail.com. Thank you.