My painting A Means to an End is inspired by a painting by the Flemish renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel. His painting The Fall of Icarus, created in 1560, depicts the Greek myth of Icarus, a parable about hubris and failed ambition. Icarus sought to escape his imprisonment on the island of Crete by using wings made by his father from feathers and wax. However Icarus ignored his father’s warning to not fly too close to the sun. When he did, Icarus’ wings were melted by the heat of the sun, causing him to fall from the sky and crash into the sea.
Bruegel’s painting depicts an expansive scene, with vignettes of daily life. In the foreground we see a farmer plowing his field, while further in the distance a shepherd herds his flock. Further still are fishermen and ships crossing the open sea. Scarcely visible however, in the lower right corner of the painting, is Icarus plunging into the ocean. His tragic death seems to go unseen by all.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I see the same thing happening today. We are currently doing many things that are proving harmful to the planet, and yet we seem to turn a blind eye to the damage growing around us.. I believe climate change to be our most important crisis, but many of us are failing to heed the warnings to curtail our actions that are adding to the problem.
I wanted to paint a contemporary corollary to Bruegel’s painting, something that could convey the looming threat of climate change. My initial idea was to portray a sprawling urban landscape, with people busily going about their daily lives, while off in the distance beyond everyone’s focus, would be a burning oil rig.
As this was going to be a fairly complex scene, I chose to first create a photo-composite of my idea in Photoshop that I could use as a guide. Once I had settled upon my composition and color palette, I began working on my underpainting.
I chose to emulate Bruegel’s composition, having the foreground sweep across the lower left and have an expanse of water in the distance. Probably the most laborious part of my painting was executing the freeway full of cars. Even though painting it was kind of an immersive, meditative process, I still felt restless to finish it. Once this was part complete, the rest of the painting came together rather quickly.
At a certain point I decided against painting a burning oil rig in the distance. It seemed too specific to last year’s Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead I decided to add something more enigmatic: a lone smokestack protruding out of the water, belching black smoke into to the sky. I believed this addition would induce any number of notions as to what is happening, or what is beneath the water.
After making some final tweaks to the foreground, my painting was finished. It may look quite detailed from a distance, but if you were to view my painting up close, you would see that it is quite loosely rendered. I can’t say the finished painting lives up to the vision in my head, but then again, they never do.
