Swimming with Sharks

Even though we are surrounded by nature, it is not always evident. Human isolation exists within built environments. I wanted to use this as a metaphor for the technologies we use to dominate the wilderness, which is the natural order of things. Our relationship with nature is ambiguous. From our point of view in the painting, the shark is a trapped predator, but drawing further back it is evident that we are the predators caged in cities of our own making. Man’s first instinct is self preservation, he wants to kill the shark, but in fact he is freeing him from his environment.