Fool for Love

Size:

38 x 56 cm (15 x 22 inches)

(Larger sizes available on request).

Medium:

Inks and mixed media with underprint on Fabriano Artistico 640gsm HP Watercolour paper.

Original handmade variant:

1 of 7

Status:

Available

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Please let us know if you would like a limited edition print of this work to be made available for you in Niki’s Etsy store. You will be contacted as soon as it’s available.

NOTES

The tale of Sisyphus has always fascinated me. He was not a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but he did succeed in tricking the gods of olympus, cheating death and rather mortally shaming Thanatos. That takes guts….or a hefty dose of the stupid. Naturally the gods, true to form, take the opportunity to capitalise on what is clearly a gambling addiction, and trick him in return.

For those of you who don’t know the tale, once he assents to descend into Hades, he’s offered a choice: either go to “medium heaven”, with all the regular proles, or step over to an innocent-looking boulder and stand a chance to roam the Elysian fields (VIP heaven: gods, nymphs and heroes a’frolicking). All you gotta do is roll that very mundane stone up that rather modest-looking hill. Get to the top and you win. Fail, and you start from scratch. Spoiler alert: he fails. Every time.

According to reliable sources, he’s still pushing that dam stone several millennia down the line.

Socrates is said to have looked forward to meeting this guy in the afterlife so he could question him and figure out if he knew something we didn’t, or was just a complete twit.

What fascinates me (after that rather long-winded introduction), is why he keeps trying. WTF? Maybe Socrates wondered too. When a course of action or behaviour has demonstrably predictable negative results, why, oh why, do we turn around and repeatedly enact it? Jung would probably mumble something about Imagos. But for realsies. This work is a censored metaphor for my relationship history back to the year dot. After 35 years, I put that boulder down and walked away to live in hell. But it took my utter dissolution to prompt that move.

~NM