GLOBAL ENEMA

GLOBAL ENEMA (Noah’s Extinction Event) - 2001 - Oil on Canvas – 112 x 95 cm

Corporate Collection, New Zealand

For some years I wanted to do an image inspired by the heavy rock band Tool’s song entitled “Aenema” which contained lyrics such as “I’m praying for rain, I’m praying for tidal waves …. I want to see the ground give way, I want to watch it all go down….Flush it all away” layered over a continuous chanting of “ Learn to swim! Learn to swim! Learn to swim! …..”. I compare this contemporary expression of Armageddon with that of the Biblical story of Noah and waited for several years to find a good and willing model. I met such a person in Niue in 2000 and he liked the idea. It turned out the Brad Matsen was an American author of some standing and when he returned to the US he sent me a copy of an illustrated book of his entitled “Planet Ocean”. This was an entertaining book on palaeontology designed for the layman, which laid out the origins and evolution of Man over the background of the various extinction events that the Earth has gone through since the beginnings of life on Earth. After reading the book, the use of Brad as the model for the painting became more significant and appropriate and even more so that the anti-anthropocentric notion of evolution was in contrast to my use of a biblical and therefore human-centered account of human origins.