This painting, entitled Gaea and Child, is an allegorical figurative artwork symbolizing the conflict between nature and humanity. Gaea (earth mother) recoils in pain from her ungrateful and insatiable child (representing humanity) who has just finished nursing. Behind them is the dying tree of life. The child has bitten his mother’s nipple, the source of his sustenance, as he chases away the fleeing birds from the cornucopia (out of which spills earth’s fruitful bounty). He will secure it for himself. His foot is perched atop the Earth, revealing his imagined relationship to the planet. Gaea brings fourth a cougar, symbolic of nature’s retributive violence, to deal with her unruly child. What we do to the Earth, it will do to us in return.