Artists are known to occasionally riff off of the work of their predecessors. This isn’t intended as mimicry, but rather to pay homage to artists they admire. I imagine most artists have their heroes. One painter I greatly admire is Frederick Edwin Church. His skill humbles me. Below is one of his better known paintings, Cotopaxi, from 1862.
I know of a few contemporary artists who have referenced Cotopaxi in their work. (Sandow Birk and Alexis Rockman are two that come to mind.) I wanted to put my own spin on this image. If I squint at the painting, the lower half resembles a cross-section of the earth, with numerous subterranean caverns. As a child, I would draw pictures with caves and tunnels beneath a landscape, similar to an ant farm. I decided to rekindle my adolescent whimsy in a new painting.
I first created a roughly painted sketch of my idea, something simple and loose that I could refer to while working on my painting.
While I could refer to Church’s painting for the portion above ground, I hadn’t determined how I would depict the lower half of my composition. Instead I would to let the brushwork in my initial underpainting guide how the image would resolve itself.
The upper portion developed quickly. I opted for a more saturated color palette than Church for this area as I wanted it to be the most vibrant part of the painting. One obstacle I encountered was how to transition between above and below ground. This transition needed to look convincing. How could I achieve depth and yet have a distinct edge where the landscape appeared sliced open? Even a lake would be shown as a cross section.
My concept was to portray the world, long after the human species had gone extinct. The only evidence of our existence would be the fractured remains of cities buried beneath the bedrock. The earth would be shown born anew, after having cleansed the surface of our presence. At this future point in time, we have become nothing more than a fossilized memory, locked in the geologic strata of the earth.
I began adding a series of subterranean chambers filled with crumbling buildings. However I didn’t know how I would make city ruins be visible in a dark cave. Initially my idea was to have a golden light illuminate the caverns, but this proved to be problematic. I tried painting this, but I felt they might be misconstrued as pools of lava or fire. Even though I liked the intensity of the gold color, it seemed too overpower the composition. I needed the underground region to feel quiet and subdued. I wanted the painting to reveal itself in stages. The volcano and smoke filled sky should be seen first, and then the buried remains below. I decided to repaint what I had done and start over. I made the caverns dark so they would recede into the pictorial space. And simultaneously I brightened the bedrock so it would appear flush to the canvas surface.
I’m not sure if the finished painting (shown below) was ultimately successful at capturing the essence of my initial preparatory study. It turned out OK, but not entirely satisfying. I think someday I may want to revisit this concept and see if I could better capture the vision I have in my head.
