Blue Lotus

Painted with ink and oil over paper mounted on board.

The deceased figure’s physical being is going back to the earth. But will her spirit make it into heaven or be banished to the other world? And in any case, don’t they have more fun down there than those of us who live above ground?

Loosely inspired by imagery from a passage in Greek myth where an island of people is wiped out before they are repopulated in numbers after a plea to Zeus, with the transformation of ants as they fell from a tree.

The first painting with more than one figure allowed me to develop the idea of interplay between two figures along with the contrasts of light and dark in their various guises.

Informed by the inversion of a life drawing to give the appearance of a half-bird, half-man creature with wings spread.
Inspired by traditional North American art, the Phoenix rising, and the pull of an Egyptian sun.