"Icarus, a Murder Allegory"

48"x24"; 2005; acrylic on panel
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This is a re-interpretation of the Icarus myth (various retellings here), the recurring moral regards youthful foolishness and, curiously, never of child endangerment -- which I've illustrated as a crime story with investigators around a chalk outline just beyond the cast light of the streetlamp and the shadow of the perpetrator cast by an out-of-frame light source. The name of the bagel shop is a reference to Pieter Bruegel's "The Fall of Icarus," a painting that a friend of mine once described as the first precursor to the "Where's Waldo?" books (this being the second).

My interest in an Icarus image results from a drawing class at Grant H.S. with Robert Wilson who gave three assignments to new students: a dragon on roller skates, someone being splashed on the back with ice water, and an Icarus. For reasons not germane, I never had those assignments.

My painting began as an imaginary cityscape and the narrative grew along with its development.

Part of the illustration portfolio;