Podalirius (2025) Original Watercolour by Bruce Robbins

This is one of a series of paintings of Covids in flight; most of the series are Ravens, and it is hard to avoid a connection to translations of Edgar Allan Poe by Mallarmé and Baudelaire. However, they are not illustrations of poems but do reflect and use the process of poetic translation as their subject. They allude to the mythic as subject matter, as myths provide a logical tool to resolve deep cultural contradictions, organise the chaos of human experience, and reflect the universal structure of the human mind. Levi-Strauss achieved this by breaking down the subject into basic building blocks ("mythemes") and using binary oppositions like life and death or nature and culture. It is no accident that mythemes and Semiotics are so closely related, as Barthes described in 'Mythologies': culture was manufacturing versions of reality.

Materials used:

Watercolour on Saunders Waterford Paper 425gsm 640gsm, 300lb 100% cotton watercolour

Details:

• Watercolour on Paper
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 76.2 x 55.88 x 0.51cm (unframed) / 76.2 x 55.88cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: Animals and birds