Artwork of the Week: Green II

The depth of perception in Green II by Daniel Loveday is impressive. This piece seems so chaotic when viewing it for the first time. There is a lot to take in here and the basis of the painting seems to be a coexistent mantra between good and evil. Good is on one side attempting to place enriching things into the earth while the evil entity is looking for ways he can destroy the good.

Many people have stated that life is just a game of chance, but in this painting, as we have all come to learn, it is more of a game of strategy. The wrong move can result in your piece being overpowered by either good or bad. Yet, there are also areas in which the good and bad coincide with one another. The image of 2 people on the board together can be regarded as good, because it is love, but it can also be a negative if the two do not share common goals.

There are so many areas in Green II where you can really begin to understand the true depths of life. The people climbing through the rubble seems to speak of how easy it is to fall from grace and how none of us will get through life without a few bumps and bruises from the climb. On the other side, we see the progress of building manmade structures and the destruction of taking away our natural resources.

This piece speaks volumes in regard to time and how we spend each day working through life. Nature vs. progress is a balancing act in which we are, ideally, supposed to find commonality. However, in the interest of boosting profits, natural entities that are in the way become a problem to the business world.

Although we can pick through the various images in this piece, let’s allow Daniel Loveday to give us his answers to a few of our questions.

We see the evil entity looking closely at a jet plane. Where is his mind according to how you perceive his level of evil practices?

He’s considering his next move. Big business is out of control in the modern era, it invests in destructive practices, hides the repercussions and launches wars to achieve a profit margin. Did you know that Exxon produced it’s own report in 1982 which modelled climate change and predicted global warming as a result of its own business model? Having accurately predicted rising temperatures what was Exxons next step? It launched a PR campaign to support denial, fund disinformation and fund organisations that would fight any progress. Imagine what they must be thinking, either the rich executives think they can buy their own safety or they feel climate change is worth the profit. Exxons own reports can be read online. In this representation of destructive capitalism the player is made up of burning forests, the blackened trees defining his muscles. Capitalism chooses profit over the future.

The good entity looks a bit confused and also annoyed. What was the basis of her facial expressions?

She actually has tears on her cheeks. She is Gaia, mother nature, the balance of nature. Planet Earth is a form of consciousness in the sense that it evolves it’s answers to any question. If one species becomes extinct another fills its place, if another species becomes dominant then the whole is thrown out of kilter.

How would you describe the chaotic imagery of people vs. progress as depicted in Green II?

In Green II the environmental collapse is represented literally as an earthquake, a collapse in society is symbolised by a collapse of the ground underfoot.

Many of your other paintings lack facial features. Can you tell us why you choose to hide or discard distinction between subjects?

Are you referring to my ‘Question head’ and ‘Commuticon’ characters? The ‘Question heads’ were always a kind of placeholder for human beings, my idea being that the question mark on their faces symbolises a future that’s in doubt, they’re like statues that become a grotesque monument to human folly standing in place of living humans. The ‘Commuticons’ are passengers in a train where the heads drop down from the top of the carriage onto the headless commuters shoulders.