Panacea

Oil and Acrylic on Panel

This painting uses the familiar trope of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to investigate the idea of cure. Plague is represented by the bubonic plague bacteria, lying in wait underground alongside Pestilence, shown as the Smallpox virus. The Black Death and Smallpox were some of the most devastating killers in human history and are now virtually nonexistent due to vaccination. Yet, every year new diseases spread rampantly as an ever increasing population forcefully collides with the natural world. The fiery backdrop of War continues to wreak havoc on human lives around the world as the greed of a powerful few obliterates the needs of too many. Famine is a very real future for us all as we continue to deplete natural resources at astounding rates and destroy biodiversity at every opportunity. One of these may be responsible for the deaths of every person on this planet. What if all our scrambling to cure disease is really just an escalating arms race with nature as it tries to rectify the biggest plague in history, humans?