This artwork is inspired by the mythological story about Icarus and Daedalus that gave rise to the idiom "Don't fly too close to the sun."

The story is about a father named Daedalus, who's held in prison by the king Minos of Crete to create all different types of inventions for him (the minotaur labyrinth), but Daedalus wishes to escape with his son Icarus, and therefore secretly creates wings for them both whenever he has some spare time. On the day he's finished, he tells his son that it's important to fly not too low, for the condensed water of the sea may weigh his feathers down, and not too high, for the wax of their wings would melt from the heat of the sun, but during their flight Icarus got blinded by the sheer delight of flying and the beauty of the sun, ignoring his father's advice, constantly flying higher and higher, until Daedalus couldn't reach him anymore, one by one, Icarus's feathers fell to the sea until he himself falls out of the sky towards his devastating destiny.

An ancient tragic story that makes you think... but I'll create my own ending in which Icarus will be saved just seconds before he crashes into the sea.
It was important to me to create this artwork as historically correct as I possibly could. If you look closely at the details, you'll find that they're flying above an island of Crete, from where they escaped, above the Aegean sea. They're both wearing ancient bracelets from the METMuseum collection. Men in that time were smoothly shaven, but had long hair on their heads and sometimes a short beard.
I had the pleasure to use a father and son for this depiction of the famous mythological tale, which happen to be my dad and brother.

All elements are photographed at different locations in Europe.
Created over several years, each element is captured with a full-frame camera and later fused using a Wacom Cintiq pro tablet, employing brushes and techniques inspired by traditional painting. ± 385 layers of raw photographs, hand-painted details, shadows and lights, color adjustments, masks, etc.