One of the last pieces of art I created since taking a long break (created in Summer 2008). Most of the Roman and ancient imagery are cutouts from stocks that I took while in Rome. My goal was to go for a surreal collage type of feel. I wanted to present the idea that even though we [the human race] are still discovering new ancient history we are still destroying the past. Sure I could go into some symbolism but that would bore you...

Inspiration from this piece came from seeing other photo-manipulations using Roman structures but looking back now the use of such images is very "whored".

As for self critique I think the cutouts could be perfected more. Also the piece may be appealing vertically, but the sides lack attention. Also the faux fire may have been overdone and might take away from the image, but in the meaning of what the piece stands for it works (at least for me). Also the size is rather small. For future works I aim to create on a bigger canvas.