Myths in My paintings

I'm consistently interested in mythologies of different cultures. Naturally, I'm most familiar with Chinese culture, but China does not have well-developed mythology. A few well known, though sketchy, stories were passed on to my generation, however, and I was able to created a few works out of these.

After Chinese myth, Greek mythology is most familiar to me, and a few works of mine on themes from Greek mythology would be more familiar to the viewers of my work. Therefore I'll skip the explanations of the first three works.

Greek:

Sisyphus



















Daphne (unfinished)














Minotaur
















I also made a few paintings based on Christian themes:

Adam and Eve














Annunciation















The Triumph of Saint George




















Chinese:

Nüwa Creating Human Beings - as in most pagan culture, the creator of human beings was a female. Nüwa is a goddess who out of boredom, played with clay dough and generated human figurines. By breathing on them, she gave them life.


Nüwa Patching Up the Sky - a terrible war between two powerful gods resulted in the collapse of the pillar holding up the sky. Sky was broken and the rain poured down (deluge) and humans suffered. Nüwa took pity on her creations and fixed the pillar, then melted many five-colored stones to patch the sky. The vapors from the heat amused the people therefore Nüwa allowed them to stay, hence the clouds.


Kuafu Chasing the Sun (unfinished) - Kuafu was a giant who wanted to communicate with the Sun. In order to catch up with the sun, he ran from sunrise to sunset. Just when he was reaching the sun, he was exhausted and fell to ground to die - his giant muscles became mountains and hills while his blood was transformed into the rivers and creeks.








Jingwei Filling Up the Sea - Jingwei was a lovely boy who drowned in the sea. From the place he drowned flew out a small bird, who took on a task worthy of Sisyphus: carrying tiny stones in his beak and dropping them into the sea, in order to fill it up, some day.