I was invited to be one of the featured artists for the Bella Via Italian Street Painting Festival. In deciding on what image to use I looked through my picture files and found myself attracted to a photograph of the life sized terra cotta figures of the warriors from the first Emperor of China - Qin Shi Huangdi. Qui had his soldiers sit for artists to create individual portraits. He had 7000 warriors buried in his tomb to be with him in the after life.

I used photoshop to work out my sketch. I used the image of the warriors and an image of a broken stone archaeology dig. I copied part of the warriors and flipped the image so I had a semi-circle of figures. I noticed how the light and shadow really worked well creating a central source of light. Originally the piece felt very dark. As I worked I put in a fresh water stream that comes right up out of the street in Valencia.

As a kid I used to dig in the ground, people would say if you dug deep enough you would get to China. So... here a fresh water spring runs deep, so deep it goes through the center of the earth and comes out on the other side of the world, in China where it has uncovered some of the Emperor's warriors and exposed the night sky. I felt a need to represent the 4 elements of nature; earth, air, fire, and water which would ground the work and created a positive feeling to something which already felt heavy and dark. I still needed fire.

These warriors were never intended to be dug up. The warriors might be wondering where their King or Emperor is. Now a good King or Emperor is concerned with the soul of his people. His warriors love him and that is why they fight for him and would die for him. I decided to creat a boat carrying a heart on fire to represent this love of the King for his warriors and people. My thought was that this street art piece is a calling for the King in all of us to return, to fight the perils of living with light in one's heart, and to have the courage to collect our ancient wisdom from the places where fresh water comes from the earth bringing life to all things.