Here is a favorite Bruegel painting, “The Fall of Icarus,” which I used as inspiration for my painting “A Busy Morning on the Road” oil on panel by Melwell, 16×20.
XIR3675 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1555 (oil on canvas) by Bruegel, Pieter the Elder (c.1525-69); 73.5×112 cm; Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium; (add.info.: Icarus seen with his legs thrashing in the sea;); Giraudon; Flemish, out of copyright
“A Busy Morning on the Road” oil on panel by Melwell, 16×20
Because in the Bruegel painting the title of the work is a sly Greek myth reference that appears in the middle ground, I thought of a darker, more Northern New Mexican take on a Greek myth.
The myth of Prometheus, who, for giving man fire is strapped to a cliff where buzzards peck out his liver, but every day his liver grows back and the buzzards come back and do it all again. I entertained a more reduced, meme-like phrase which is sufficiently dark: “New liver, same buzzards.”
I decided maybe that should e reserved for another painting, maybe one inspired by an appropriate Goya work.