'Atlantis' - Myth and Metaphor: Stories of sunken cities have fascinated us for millennia; the most tantalizing of all: Atlantis. We are drawn to the idea of other worlds, a mythical city lost to the waves, an advanced ancient civilization, a Utopia we could have evolved from... ‘Atlantis’ can also be seen as a metaphor, bridging human experience to more sublime notions; the feeling of catharsis by a terrifying disaster of a scale beyond comprehension, which is at the same time purifying. And from this root, stories of a Flood appear in variants – the Great Flood of Mesopotamian mythology, the Christian story of The Flood and Noah’s Ark in the Old Testament. Here the metaphor is connected with a sense of rebirth or redemption. In these 'Atlantis’ paintings, Greek temples of the Parthenon are submerged, such as the Ereichteion with Karyatiden; a statue of an Egyptian pharaoh drowned; an Amphitheater sunken at the ocean floor…. More recent reference to 'Atlantis' by underwater archaeologic finds of the Egyptian/Greek city Thonis/Heracleion near the coast of Alexandria have been an inspiration to the series as well. Moreover, 'Atlantis' is a contemplation on the preserverance of civilisation; a concern for the state of the arts and the survival of our cultural values.