Haunting the Ruins

This is a series that I painted in 2017 using traditional Renaissance style Egg Tempera painting techniques on panel under the tutelage of Richard Gann in an Independent Study during my final semester at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI.

These small works were an exploration of the ‘what’ after the current capitalist trajectory of making the Earth uninhabitable for humans. Our fleshy bodies can only handle so much heat.
I imagine that in a post-human world, that the Earth will not implode, but will instead, recover from the damage capitalist extraction and greed. Oddly enough, the buildings that remained standing were mostly houses, now overgrown, flooded, but kept intact by the ghosts of those who lived there.

I took this independent study, specifically to learn Renaissance style egg tempera painting: freshly-separated egg yolk mixed with various powdered pigments. This mix of yolk and pigment made a paint that dried in seconds, could be layered, and retain its detail of application. This allowed for control, and playing between larger forms of the environment and the detail often needed for architectural elements.