Artist's commentary
burning arnold
Depression. You're all too familiar with that creeping feeling. It's a steady fall into the darkness of despair, and you can only watch helplessly as it eats away at you like fire. Even that cheerful, "I'm okay!" face you're putting on doesn't work for you anymore. You don't even feel like you're standing stably. How are you going to get through this? Not when even the motivational talks of that armless, legless guy can't even lift your spirits one bit. So you just burn. Nobody cared about you anyway. Actually, this image is based off a very peculiar event held annually in New London, Connecticut where they burn an oversize effigy of Benedict Arnold (sadly not my rendition of him). It's supposed to be payback for Arnold ordering the city to be burnt to the ground after he decided to go "screw you all, I'm siding with the UK!" The Arnold effigy is depicted wearing a British (redcoat) uniform (for obvious reasons) and is usually depicted with two faces or a mask, highlighting him being a backstabber and traitor. By tradition, they'd amputate Arnold's left leg before lighting him up, as Arnold took bullets to that leg twice when he was serving under the United States. It's also a reference to a popular story (we still don't know if this conversation actually took place) where Arnold asked what would happen to him if the Americans managed to capture him. The answer he got was something among the lines of "We will cut off your broken leg and bury it with full military honor, then we will hang the rest of you for treason."Time taken: 5hr 24min
Speedpaint video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6CKx…Benedict Arnold (character) (c) Lincoln/flandre495
Benedict Arnold (real one) (c) USA