Sea of Despair Painting

This work, I strongly feel, is one of my most accomplished and sophisticated, in terms of composition and technique. I am very proud of this work and spent over a year on this. The landscape here is based on a photo of the Giza Plateau in Egypt (the pyramids are off to the left) that I took in September 2001. I aimed to create a gritty, textured and an archaic atmospheric quality to this piece, exemplified in the clouds of dust and the burning logs/smoke. The idea or feeling behind this work was of the horror of warfare and the deaths of the innocent (specifically indicated in the baby in the foreground). The small paintings within this work are based on actual well-known paintings. The birds featured are crows and Egyptian vultures.