The Kingdom

I spent around a month working on this piece that mixes my love of Ancient Rome and Egypt, with the landscape here based on the Black Desert in the western area of Egypt.
I used a range of grey lead pencils (H, B, 2B, 4B and 6B) and various techniques, such as stippling, cross hatching, fine line work and tissue paper to create a soft blending of tones.
The central figure here is of the Roman Emperor Commodus, based on the figure depicted in a 19th century painting by Edwin Blashfeld. I have also depicted this figure in my oil painting ‘His Divine Madness’.
My aim with this image was to suggest some mysterious narrative that may have unfolded or is about to unfold, creating a degree of tension plus emphasising the inner mind or madness of Commodus.
Work will be sent express post in a sturdy postal tube.

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Jeremy Elkington has been painting since 1995 and in 2002 achieved his Masters of Visual Arts (By Research) at Monash University. Since 1997 Jeremy has been exhibiting his work in group and solo exhibitions and regularly submitting his work in an array of art prizes across Australia. In 2009 he won 'Best Australian Landscape' at the Herald Sun Rotary Club of Camberwell Art Show and in both 2018 and 2022 was a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize. At the core of much of Jeremy's artwork (especially in larger paintings) are desert landscapes, the ancient world (particularly Ancient Rome), ornament and abstraction. From 1997 to 2011 Arabic ornament and architectural elements (as well as the desert landscape) had been explored. Desert landscapes remain but Arabic art had been superseded by the armour, weaponry, ornament, architectural elements and sculpture of Ancient Rome. Within such works Jeremy aims to evoke a sense of the hidden narrative, the epic, the surreal, the ornamental, the archaic as well as beauty. Since 2013 Jeremy has also explored abstraction, abstract-expressionism, silhouettes, the Gothic, portraiture (particularly influenced by the work of Francis Bacon) space and depictions of film scenes. Jeremy has also been producing drawings whose range of subject matter reflects that within his paintings but, at times, has explored pattern and ornament to an intense degree.
Jeremy has sold artwork across Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA.