# Hello This is a test - list - and stuff
**The Garden Wall** of the Latent Architect # On Creation For the vast majority of my life I have had a deep, onging obsession with creation. By [creation] I am not only referring to the origin of all things, nor do I solely mean the process of creating things ourselves. All of it. From the generation of a new idea or piece of art, to the process through which reality and existence came to be. Creation, in it's entirety, is what I find to be the single most fascinating aspect of life and what we are capable of witnessing within it. The specific aspect that I want to talk about at this moment, though, is what humans create. And, even more specifically, that which we create for the purpose of expression. ## Art It took a long time to see the connection between the two and even longer to discover why it was I found the subject so fascinating. The fact that someone can repurpose the collective pool of all of the things they have experienced in their life, reshape and mold an isolated selection of those experiences, and compress it all into a format which can be shared... That is as close to magic as we have ever gotten. I used to think of art as something sacred and refined. Something that could only be accomplished in a certain way, by certain people. I had created a list of rules, laws that determined what could be considered "art".
![](https://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/sites/default/files/styles/ycba_image_container/public/Martin_The%20Deluge_0.jpg?itok=gGdiLZrZ)
| John Martin | | British, 1789–1854 | | :--- | :---: | ---: | | 1834 | Oil on canvas | 66 1/4 x 101 3/4 inches (168.3 x 258.4 cm) |
John Martin’s art deals with themes of the sublime power of nature over man. Martin believed that, at some point in the past, the sun, the moon, and a comet collided, causing a massive flood that extinguished many forms of life on earth. He shared this belief with the French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier, who is known to have seen The Deluge in Martin’s studio. In addition to referencing this collision and the resulting cataclysmic flood, The Deluge—with its drowning and ravaged figures scattered across the canvas—also takes inspiration from the story of the flood in the first book of the Bible, in which God punished man’s wickedness by destroying nearly every living thing on earth. In the painting, Martin mingled religion with science as well as Romantic literature, drawing inspiration from Lord Byron’s drama Heaven and Earth (1821). When The Deluge was shown at the Paris Salon in 1835, Martin’s painting was awarded a gold medal by King Louis-Philippe.
[B1978.43.11] Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection [B1978.43.11]: "Source" [](http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1669250)