My artwork is inspired by ‘Dancing Mutants’ by Hernando R. Ocampo. Hernando R. Ocampo was a leading member of the Philippines Neo-realists along with Vicente Manansala who broke away from idealised depiction of their country after World War 2. The Neo-realists wanted to create more abstract and organic paintings to fit the Philippines. ‘Dancing Mutants’ was inspired by a film called ‘The beginning of the end’. The plot revolves around an agricultural scientist who has grown enormous vegetables with the aid of radiation from nuclear explosions. The locusts that feed on these genetically modified vegetables rapidly become gigantic monsters who attack the nearby city. The artist created this painting to show the horrors of the atomic bomb that ended World War 2. The contrasting colour palette shows the abundant flora and fauna of the Philippines, whereas the demonic shapes show the mutations of animals and humans after the bomb. The bright, contrasting colours and distorted shapes of this painting and intriguing backstory chose the painting for me. The number 509 is repeated twice in the corner of my painting. This refers to the unit of the US army forces who conducted the bombings. The number 29 is also found on my painting. This is the date of the prohibition of chemical weapons such as nuclear bombs(also my date of birth). The lamb is a symbol of innocence and youth. It is surrounded by orange triangles and red flames showing the inescapable death of innocent families during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The huddled brown rectangles depict a brick wall. The brick wall is placed under the bomb to represent the banning of nuclear bombs. The bomb is a bright yellow, contrasting with the other colours and pops out of the artwork. This shows that the bomb was the main reason Hernando R. Ocampo created this painting. The colours that I chose in this painting were selected to resemble the ones on ‘Dancing Mutants’. For example the candy apple red, maroon, chocolate cosmos, burgundy, cinnabar, apple green, Brunswick green, bistro etc. This painting stands as a reinvention of Ocampo’s masterpiece;A painting of the horrors of war and the consequences that come with it.