V.A.L.I.S and Pompeii

Also named YHWH and Gomorrah. This piece was influenced by two great literary works; the Bible and Valis, a novel by Philip K. Dick. The two have more in common than may be initially believed. V.A.L.I.S is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System and really refers to Dick's view on God. By a lot of people, Dick is considered a modern gnostic, and the novel itself draws inspiration from Dick's own mystical and unexplainable religious experiences. The writing is heavily autobiographical with some sci-fi elements, leaving the reader to figure out what is real and what is fiction on their own. This painting imagines the allegories of the Bible to be real and Dick's novel to be real and for them to be one and the same. Different names are given to the same things. A small mountain city is destroyed by fire and brimstone with a vast pink light shining down on the citizens in their final hour, in the background a faint angelic figure blows the doomsday trumpet.