Fire--Elemental Ballet

"The ancient Greek word for element (stoicheion) literally meant "syllable", the basic unit from which a word is formed."---Wikipedia "Classical Element"

Fire is the building block of human socioty. The most basic of human comforts--food, warmth, light and comfort--all have a base in fire. Even in modern life, a form of fire still cooks our food and heats our homes. Romantic moods are created with tame fires in hearths and candles, and fire has an intense sensual connotation in popular culture. Fire and flame often symbolizes dangerous sensuality, the kind that would consume its lover, given half a chance. Without fire, we could not have worked metal, could not have created the large buildings that are the trademark of our civilization. Yet fire is far from tame, and even our "pet" fires, our candles and matches can easily step beyond our control. And once it does so, fire becomes what it always has been: An unstoppable, consuming force. The molten rock at the core of the earth, the smoke that chokes the air, forest and brush fires, so far beyond our control that the only thing humankind can do is hurry to get out of Fire's way.

This is the second in the "Elemental Ballet" series. You can find the first here:

Water-[link]

Detail shots here:[link]

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Two down, two to go. Much further than I got the last time.

"Fire" was a bit more risky than "Water" was. Origionally, all four Elements were female. When I began working on the redos, however, I realized that (1. that was boring and (2. It wouldn't streach my creativity to do yet another set of paintings with girls in it. So after a little thought, I recast both Fire and Earth as men. The theme of these images is, after all, supposed to be my interpretation of the Elements.

There is a lot of symbolism in this image, a little bit more than there was in water. Again, the color is obvious. Fire is red in just about every culture. The casting of "Fire" as male is two-fold. Fire is more masculine than feminine to me, and fire has very close ties to sexual attraction in popular culture, it's easier for me, as a straight female, to get the "heat", so to speak, with a male figure. And men are rarely cast as objects of attraction. His pose was the hardest part. I couldn't find an image of a male dancer that was both attractive and didn't make him look like an extreamly flat-chested girl. I finally settled on this pose. It just...looked...right. As did the fire hair and the fire in his hands. Real hair just wouldn't have worked.

The volcanos and the lava are what I think the oldest and purest form of fire is. Humans have managed to tame many forms of fire, but as of yet, the only known way to handle a volcano is get out of the way as quickly as possible. The darkness of the background is smoke and haze. The god-awful jpg compression is Not My Fault (People DO still have dialup, you know) The house and the sword, knife and horse-shoes, as well as the hammer (look closely) symbolize human's uses for fire, but to put that in perspective with the rest of the element, the house is on fire and the tools are small. We can use fire, but we're really not as good at taming it as we think we are.

The biggest difficulty of this image was capturing Fire without making it freakng monotonous AND without putting so many symbols in the image it became jumbled and boring looking. I did three or four different layouts for the background before settling on this one...I'm not completely satisfied, but this is the best I had.

I am NEVER painting lava flows ever, ever again. As much as I hate (hate? despise. Lothe. Cringe in fear from) painting rocks, lava flows are ten times worse. Suprisingly, lava was easier to get "right" than rocks (still haven't managed that feat) but GOOD GOD MAN, the DETAIL required. Never, never, never again.

Enjoy.

Oh yeah...and I give permission to all the clubs in my journal to display my work in their gallery.