Come Look with Me

 This painting, executed on a small canvas in a sufficiently loose painting style to warrant calling it an "oil sketch", depicts a stylized coal liquefaction plant, conveniently located on a seashore, in an unclear metabolic relationship with the nearby abundance of water into which it can tap by means of thick pipes emanating from its concrete base. HYDRA Coal Liquefaction Plant, oil on "Stylex" canvas, 30 x 40 cm Certain nations, nation states, countries, etc. in the history of modern civilization found it necessary to expand, colonize, or engage in questionable trade relations with other states because their own natural resources did not suit the demands of said state's motorized civil society nor war machinery. The alternative to expansion however could have been the development of efficient means of transformation of naturally occurring unsuitable resources (coal, in this case) by utilizing either alchemistic, holistic, biochemical or chemical pathways on a...