The Picnic is a Painting from a series of found images of gas masks. The People are outside painting, dressed in painting outfits with their gas masks on. The only colour is on the artists canvas but the painting is not of their surroundings. "The Picnic"
Hand Made Painting for sale on supported canvas 30 x 20cm ready to hang £60. + p&p
The gas mask is quite a recent symbol in popular culture although it has been in use for hundreds of years. There are babylonian texts and drawings showing plans for an apparatus that looks like an environment mask. During the Plagues the gas masks of the Plague doctors were used to fend of the miasma that they thought contained the plague. In The first world war the gas attacks caused the gas mask to develop quickly into the form we are most used to seeing them now. The second world war was where most of these images come from because during WW2 any attempt to make light of the situation was publicised creating bizarre images of people making the best of it
The contradiction here abstracts from the dystopian world in which the gas masks pictured eventually led to the horror of the nazi gas Chambers. The gas mask is both a symbol of fear and protection from toxicity and death. Imagine if you can of living in a world where you had to live in a gas mask all the time. Experiencing all your life through it, where all your senses were hampered by an artificial lens and how that would affect both your life and your perception of reality.
The contradiction here abstracts from the dystopian world in which the gas masks pictured eventually led to the horror of the nazi gas Chambers. The gas mask is both a symbol of fear and protection from toxicity and death. Imagine if you can of living in a world where you had to live in a gas mask all the time. Experiencing all your life through it, where all your senses were hampered by an artificial lens and how that would affect both your life and your perception of reality.
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