The Heliades - daughters of the Sun - Evening Painting

The story of Phaethon shows how we humans have deluded ourselves in to believing that we are able to control the reins of nature, even as we scorch and pollute the Earth. Phaethon is eventually killed for driving his sun chariot too close to Earth and threatening its very existence. I find remarkable parallels with Climate Change. I now take up the story when his sisters, the Heliades mourn their brother’s death so deeply that they metamorphose into Black Poplar Trees. Trees and humans become one and the same; they shed tears of Amber, which is a kind of tree resin. When their mother tries to release them from the imprisoning bark, the nymphs are themselves in pain and cry out. Trees and humans become permeable and interchangeable in this story. Amber then flows down the river and becomes a precious and much valued gemstone. The Amber shed by the daughters of the Sun is like pools of sunlight. This trauma becomes a positive. These paintings have been experimental; combining tradition and innovation. I have used Illustrator to put together an imaginary constructed vision of the British landscape from my own photographs; that was based around the area of Constable’s Suffolk. I used this as a starting point because Constable has come to represent all that is perfection in an ideal English landscape, and yet he lived in a time of great upheaval and depicted only an imaginary composite image, as I do. The size of my large paintings is identical to The Hay Wain (1821). Evening also alludes to the Biblical creation myth of the first day; where evening came first and followed by the morning. My version, that places evening later on in the series, forewarns us of the possible evening of human life on earth.