Black Planet

Gouache
2009

Illustration and narrative by Me. Assignment for Illustration Painting I

Black Planet

      Eons ago, throughout the whole of their existence, humanity was obsessed with the end of the world. Despite this obsession they brought about their own demise. They were thwarted by their own sentience: their attempt to achieve god-hood with mastery over the microbe, the atom, the elements and nature. These creatures tore away at each other like rats, fighting over life sustaining resources, hoarded by the upper rungs of society. The lower classes were lost in the fray. All war-fodder: some used as soldiers, others helpless victims to these chess-games of global industry. A dark alchemy of industrial contamination, global-scale murder, and the devouring of resources could not be tempered by the last weak efforts of the few toward preservation. Epidemics emerged, the numbers of the dead metastasized like the sicknesses in their bodies. Eco-systems died out and eliminated all sources of food. Desperate wars over the last farmlands and water-sources killed off the majority. In the end, the upper echelon of society were able to buy themselves the luxury of dying last. But the world did not end.

              A ghostly terrain roles out from the mists, like a real Domos Aidaou. The ancient remains of a domicile crumbles in this forest, ruins of a society forever forgotten with the death of human consciousness. For now the only stirring in this world is the movement of contaminated flora and fauna. The trees hum with a poisonous bioluminescence. Scurrying forth from many generations of mutation, the cacophony of a thousand gnarled creatures can be heard in the darkness. The occasional darting retina can be spied by lurking predators in between glowing branches and leaves. The steaming and hissing of a once toxic steam now gently licks the faces of the horrid creatures and lurching tendrils as they reach into the water for nourishment.

              Throughout the eons, the pendulum swings. The world will never end. Though ravished through the ages by predatory giants – from the dinosaurs to humanity – Nature will not be victimized. She will always prevail.