Earth, Water, Fire and Air

Gnome, Nymph, Salamander and Sylph. This is "Earth, Water, Fire and Air".



While fighting with brushstrokes effects through pure genetic algorithms, I wanted to represent the four elements, how? was the first question, four side wheel? flowing matter?
Well, four elements represent the very basics of our personalities, as I see it, its combinations made us attractive or unappealing, with no rule, no reason interposed, I find the best in women, in many ways, but I've been influenced for long by a feminist mother, so I'd be biased. ;-)
The salamander, strong and surviving the unbearable environments, and the sylph, as lightly substantial and pure as air naturally is, are the ones in my mind since my childhood readings. Air, so good is breathing, I tracked sylphs during the worst years of my lung problems as a child.

In the image I liked the simple mix of brushstrokes and fluent computer-generated colours in four tones. So I let it live instead of erasing it, which was the first idea.

To each of the four roots, or elements, into which the Greeks divided all matter, a particular spirit was later made to correspond.
Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician, gave them their names: the Gnomes of earth, the Nymphs of water, the Salamanders of fire, and the Sylphs, or Sylphides, of air. All of these words come from the Greek. The French philologist Littre traced the etymology of "sylph" to the Celtic languages, but it seems quite unlikely that Paracelsus, who gave us the name, knew anything about those tongues.
No one any longer believes in the Sylphs, but the word is used as a trivial compliment applied to a slender young woman. Sylphs occupy an intermediate place between super natural and natural beings; Romantic poets and the ballet have not neglected them.

J.L.Borges, The Book of the imaginary beings.