This mixed media celestial basketball game is taking place on two 22 inch wide canvases, one for the players and one for the scoreboard with a total height of 34 inches. The Greek gods are playing the Egyptian gods using the planets for basketballs and the earthling players can’t resist trying to get in on the pickup game.
The Greek figures are painted in the style of ancient Athenian red-figure vases and their jerseys have a Greek temple symbol. The Egyptian figures are painted in the style and colors of ancient Egyptian tomb and palace paintings. Their logo is a cartouche with hieroglyphics signifying royal or divine names as painted on coffins and the walls of royal tombs. Human players are made from cut, painted and collaged balsa wood. The scoreboard is a plastic basketball hoop and backboard painted to show the name and decorative motifs of the two teams with the time keeper set to Infinity. Actual numbers used by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians display the score. Crystals shine for the moons of Saturn and adorn the headdress wreath of the Greek team captain.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer known for his heliocentric model of the cosmos. He believed the planets revolve around the sun instead of around the Earth as most astronomers previously believed. In this painting, even that more accurate model is discarded and the gods are freely tossing and dribbling the planets as they please. A few earthlings are desperately clinging to their planet but some basketball pros are trying to make the shot and beat the gods at their own game. As a warning the Egyptian bird is dangling a player from his beak trying to stop him from participating.
The desperate earthlings clinging to their planet bring to mind the current dialogues about climate change. The painting can be viewed as a commentary on how precarious our position might be in what we would rather believe is an essentially orderly and well planned universe. Not having Infinity to play the game, the heart and spirit of humanity can be admired in the outmatched earthling players still striving to make a buzzer beater shot. It appears to be a triumph for the humans since one player is poised right above the basket about to make a slam dunk. This striving against all odds is what ennobles mankind even though the gods will keep playing long after any one player has left the game.
Goodbye Copernicus by Ellen Chadwick, oil on canvas, 34″x22″, 2023, in collection of the artist.