My Icarus

During our original creation of Apocalypse 2006, 

I was struck by Herbert James Draper's Lament for Icarus from 1898: Icarus, semi-nude, his wings vast, thick and powerful, the beautiful youth draped across a rock, held up by angelic sea-nymphs, the Nereids. 

This image implies a collusion of mythologies. It is, in its Hellenic context, the inescapable destiny of those who challenge the gods, disturb the social order, to become the instruments of their own destruction; whereas, in this image, there resonates a loss of innocence, the death of the Christ. 

In our revisiting of this myth during our work with Sarah Stanley, I find my Icarus wants to live, wants to fall in love and wants to soar. He is, however, overshadowed by his crafty father, Deadalus – a murderer! –, incarcerated by the Cretan king Minos and hunted after their initial escape as a criminal. He is pushed, literally, into flight. 

A modern Icarus: a child soldier, carried on a stretcher by medics.