The Arena

This painting is of a pivotal moment in my development as a teenager during my formative years. I had a visual hallucination of this small scene of bugs fighting each other, and all kinds of conclusions about what this could mean. This occurred during a time of very high stress when I was learning about my feelings towards life, and an adult life, versus the responsibility of surviving in the world as something that was destined to be temporary in bodily form. That there could be life, sharp and cruel but enduring in its murderous power and life that was indifferent was a concept that I had learned from this vision. This was very important in understanding scale, and knowing that after all of it is over we sink into the ground still and that all of it is fitting into a small window of time.

Oil on Pane