After spending a year or so doing copies of masterpieces on the street I ventured even further afield from traditional street painting by executing large, original compositions. I was anxious to compose original works of art within the language of Italian classicism. For works like the one below, I did not make preliminary drawings, but composed the images directly on the spot. The reason for this was that I had begun to feel that the large images needed a different structure than the small pictures I had been working with. My first compositions were not easy to distinguish from Renaissance and Baroque works, and most people mistook them for copies. At the same time I was beginning to develop the 3D pavement perspective with these transitional works. I loved the theme of the “fall of the rebellious angels”, as it lent itself to active and free drawing. The image below is probably from 1983 or 1984.
Below is a very fun piece on the theme of heaven and hell performed by Phillipe Jaroussky with the group L’Arpeggiata.
The libretto (with my amateur translation) is attached below: