Debris Painting

This painting, like most of Robert’s current work, takes its primary inspiration from the field of theoretical physics, starkly contrasted with religious allegory and symbolism. Michaelangelo’s famous Pieta is often regarded as one of the greatest works by one of the greatest artists ever to have lived, depicting arguably the most important story from one of the most widely followed faiths of all time. Standing in one of the world’s most sacred sites, painstakingly hewn from beautiful white marble, the levels of meaning it represents to so many for different reasons are manifold. It has value to humans, derived from both the stories it tells and the unbelievable level of skill and vision involved in its creation. All that being said, If you were to blast it in to space tomorrow, to endlessly drift in the cosmos, it would just become another one of countless floating rocks that will hover in the darkness forever, long after the last lights of the universe have gone out. When you remove it from the context for which it was designed, it looses it’s power and meaning, imbued entirely by humans. Much as the old faiths of the world are slowly being pushed away by our ever advancing scientific progress, which provides increasing evidence that we are far less significant and special than we are comfortable to believe.