Landscape With a Man Killed By a Snake

2011
Inkjet on watercolour paper
85 x 56 centimeters

A viewer of Poussin's painting could easily be seduced by the bucolic loveliness of the landscape and overlook the fatal drama which has taken place there. The figures are barely discernable in the forest, but look closely and the cry of their alarm is palpable.

My rendition of Poussin's Landscape With a Man Killed By a Snake is more akin to Hollywood, it has a theatricality which undermines the sense of tragedy. The intention was not to satirise Poussin's work, which I admire, it was more about testing the boundaries of this project reimagining classic art and cinema. I would definitely have treated the subject with more delicacy and sombreness had I made it a few years later.

Landscape With a Man Killed By a Snake by Nicolas Poussin : National Gallery London
J.M.W. Turner's 1799 copy of the Poussin painting

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