Remember that game?  I loved that game.  That’s not what this post is all about however.  As long as I’ve got Icarus on the brain, but am not yet positioned to jump in to the larger painting, I’m going to work on a related composition that occurred to me while reading up on the story.  As the story goes, Daedalus begins work on the wings when Icarus is a young boy…four or five years old.  It took him ten years to complete them, making Icarus around fourteen years old at the time of his flight.  I have a five year old myself, who is often underfoot in the studio while I am working, and I can easily imagine Daedalus in a similar situation.  In fact, one account of the story mentions Icarus playing with the feathers in Daedalus’ workshop.  If I were Daedalus, I would entertain my son, and get him mentally prepared for his eventual escape by fashioning a doll with wings for him to pretend with…and identify with.  I’ve seen the way Asher plays with his toy airplanes and rockets, and I thought Icarus as a boy flying his winged doll would make an excellent painting.  Asher, of course, modeled for Icarus.  I also found images online of  figurines made as toys for the children of ancient Greece, so the doll (let’s be honest here…the action figure) in the painting will be based on those designs.  The setting is a rocky beach on Crete, also based on images of an actual beach on Crete.

Here is a quick shot of the painting’s progress as of this afternoon:

The canvas is 18 X 36.

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