Essence

-December-

This was a turning point, because I decided to switch from creating pieces based off of stories and instead do pieces that show elements that myths and folk tales have in common. This first painting is called Essence beacause it is about how ancestry is the basis for myths and storytelling.

This piece is done in the style of Salvador Dali, so I had to reseach surrealism and common symbols in Dali's work. I borrowed some parts of his style in the sky, since his pieces often have a big, open blue sky; the horizon, as he likes to have a flat, empty horizon save for a random protrusion; and the eggs, since they were his personal symbol for birth and the new.

In this, you can see the staircase, representing life and ancestry, as it goes into a black hole, representing the oblivion that the future represents to many facets of culture. The faces in the stairs are screaming, because their stories may be lost. This is because I think that much of storytelling is a way of immortalizing people and the times that they lived in, and that is why ancestry the base of it. Also in the picture are eggs, representing the new generation; paper, which is blank and out-of-place to represent stories and how they represent people's lives but can only capture so much (like how big the stairs are, but how little green is dripping onto the paper); and the blue rose in place of the sun, showing how love guides the path of ancestry. After all, if there wasn't love, everyone would be either a hermit or a homicidal maniac, so the staircase of ancestry would actually just be a step before people died out. :P