Early Atlantis sketch

atlantis

My Atlantis series of paintings was (is?) based on a single dream I had during the summer of 2011. In the dream I was walking through a forest when it opened into a clearing filled with abandoned and broken but incredibly ornate and beautiful mosaic statues.

Above is the first sketch I made while thinking about how to convey the dream in a painting or series. After struggling for an entire year with the problem of conveying the simultaneous sense of wonder and unease I felt in the dream, I finally decided to depict a series of smaller pieces of the scene rather than try to encompass the entire thing in just one image.