Agharta

Agharta is a Buddhist concept of the Subterranean World and is believed to be secretly located somewhere in Tibet, the gateway being guarded by Lamas. There are also connections to the Hollow Earth theory of advanced Atlanteans living under the Earth's crust in Antarctica with Nazi connections to this theory through some expeditions sent by them to Tibet and Antarctica and a mysterious voyage by a U Boat to Antarctica at the very end of the Second World War.
This is a companion picture to some recent ones like "City Of The Sky People" and "Butte States" in that it has a fantasy city in it with an emphasis on the sky. This picture was originally going to be of Antarctica but when I came across the Tibetan connections I decided it would be more visually interesting to set it there.
It was originally conceived as being painted in desaturated colours in quite a limited palette but once I had painted in the underpainting I changed my mind and went for a warm top half and a freezing cold bottom half with the cave glow breaking up the otherwise fairly monochromatic bottom part of the picture. Compositionally I have placed the cave with Tibetan buildings above and the foreground tower building at a third in from the sides forming a central diamond with the background mountain. The mountain is loosely based on Mount Kailash (Meru), the most sacred mountain in Tibet and important to Buddhists.
I hope to be bringing this to show at IX in October. Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Agharta is also the title of a favourite Miles Davis album...