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Shaun Tan - "Always Know the Way Home" - oil on canvas
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Always Know the Way Home
Oil on canvas by Shaun Tan (2012).
Artwork size: 86 x 76 cm (33.9" x 29.9)
Frame size: 88.5 x 78.5 x 4.7 cm (34.8" x 30.9" x 1.9")
"This painting, one of the earliest images imagined for the book, is largely inspired by a recurring dream I used to have as a child. It involved walking home from school (either alone or with my brother) and then suddenly noticing it was the middle of the night and nobody else was around, no house or streetlights, no sound, and even after walking for hours we were no closer to home. It came with a dreadful feeling of complete stillness, of being left behind by life. This painting, however, is far more hopeful than frightening. The boys look small and vulnerable, but they are secure in their togetherness and purpose, and the road home is clearly marked. They just need to keep moving, to stay together, and eventually they will reach the dawn light."
"In some ways this landscape is an extension of the crow universe, except that it might have more to do with the boys’ inner fears, an emotional graveyard of previously failed adventures. Earlier sketches involved a backyard strewn with half buried and burnt toys and domestic objects, or just piles of exposed landfilll that accumulate as a result of ordinary living."
"The objects here are very stream-of-consciousness and not especially symbolic. A huge animal skull, gutted institutional buildings, a crashed warplane, bombs, machine parts, craters, and spiky growths. In hindsight, I think there is some similarity with landscapes of World War I, such as those depicted in paintings by British artist Paul Nash (which I studied at university) as well as photographs of landscapes devastated by mining and other environmental degradation. The photographs of Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes are particularly inspirational here, and less consciously, The Isle of the Dead by 19th century Symbolist Arnold Boecklin. The colour of the image is a little unnatural, a bit poisonous and mineral, in contrast to the more organic blush of light on the horizon. It’s a borderland between life and death, with all the grim beauty that might entail." —Shaun Tan