The legend of Theseus and the Minotaur has been referenced and retold in our media for decades, and I wanted to have my own interpretation of the story. I was inspired by classical paintings of forests and loved how the artists showed light. The bull is made to look like another set to the piece, charging out from the foliage. Theseus, a statue hiding behind the tree, warily watches on. Classical forms of art and the story of the battle went hand in hand because both are old forms of communication, visual and narrative, that we still involve in our modern lives.
A technique I used a lot was the black mask so I could have more control and non-permanent erasure to the photo. I used a lot of layer bend modes to get the scene more immersive and used gaussian blur to make objects closer to the camera blurred. I clipped layers and did a lot of color & texture edits to make the scene cohesive.
Surrealist compositions encourage the artist to exaggerate and make bigger than life visual ideas. I think this makes surrealist pieces sometimes even more relatable because they suspend our disbelief and people can make their own interpretation of the piece more easily than a realistic composition. I was able to push the boundaries of reality and invite the audience to theorize what the context of the scene is.
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