I read Anthem by Ayn Rand years ago, but her words lingered. If we lose sight of our existence, we can be duped into following a "pied piper" and lose our individual identity. In Anthem, a young man and woman begin to see beyond the sterile community around them and leave to develop their own society based on individualism.

An Anthem for the Individual developed over a painting in progress. I used the brown and white already on the canvas as an underpainting and layered yellows with a palette knife. When the imagery began to emerge, I developed the city, using the edge of several palette knives to create a suggestion of a very stark looking urban setting. The darker yellows in the sky are hints of mountains in the distance. The lone figure leaving the building is the symbol for the individual.