In this first work, I am drawing on work from Rembrandt, one of his only seascapes, which was stolen from a museum in Boston. The painting is of a ship among turbulent waves and a violent sea. Even in my very description of the painting, I have made a transgression. This is one of the themes of this work. We sometimes paint nature as violent and unforgiving, for it creates storms and causes death. In this painting, the waves crash upon the boat and it looks as if it will soon submerge. Nature, however, is not doing this with malicious intent. In fact, there is no intent at all.  
As demonstrated in The Tempest, there is a strange contradiction in how we think of nature. At times, we consider it a weak force, something we must take care of, and control. At other times however, in storms and moments of great crisis, we see our insignificance in the power of nature. This contradiction is fundamental to our relationship with nature. It is neither weak nor strong, because for us to call it either, would be to personify it and give it an intention. The earth does not year to hurt us, and as such create a storm to punish, instead, the storm happens, not from a place of agency, but as a matter of pure chance. 
In the opening scene of The Tempest, Gonzalo says, “Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him… make the rope of his destiny our cable,” (Shakespear, line 25-28). This line demonstrates the irrational belief that many people held and still hold, that nature, and the universe, have some chosen fate for them. This connects back to the idea of misguidedly giving the sea agency, because just as the sea is indifferent, so is the universe as a whole. It is not a conscious indifference though, more like that of a stone, after all a stone is part of nature, because the stone does not care because it cannot care. It is a stone. This argument is shockingly simple, and I believe many would agree, and yet many people still believe that nature wants something special from them (many non-religious people believe this, hence the irrationality). 
   I employed a further connection to The Tempest because it has a very similar scene from what I have depicted here; a boat floundering in the vast ocean, and an onlooker. In the case of the book, the onlooker was Prospero, who was exerting his will into the sea. This “exerting his will” is what gives the waves their violent meaning, he wanted them to crash upon the ship in a destructive manner, and as such, it is his will, not that of nature, that is significant. 
   In my college, the man looking down upon the hellish landscape has two meanings. Firstly, as described, he is a symbol for Prospero, but his second meaning is more broad. Throughout our class, illusion has played a large role in the discussion, and the idea of reality has always been prevalent. The torn paper overlaid onto the background is meant to represent a tear in the onlookers perception of reality. Hell is thought of as a very distinct concept, very different from the world we reside in right now. In this question of reality however, a parallel is drawn between the “normal realm”, and hell. Perhaps the only difference is our perception of the two. This portrayal of perception relates as well to the ideas we talked about relating to Saussure’s theory of Signs. He said that there is a signifier and signified, and that images and words related the conceptual idea of things that we hold. Derrida however, refutes the idea of a universal signified. He says that each person bears their own concept of what any word or image signifies. If I say water, you might think of a droplet, an ocean, rain, or the pure form of water as an existent, but it is not a universal truth. Instead, it is something that is constructed by our use of language, and each person's familiarity with the concept. If you grew up by a lake, perhaps your idea of “water” is a lake, or at the very least, a large body of water. 
   The idea of hell vs. earth as a problem of only our perception is embedded in the next image I used. The Stonemason’s Yard is a famous painting depicting this city-scape. This painting portrays a different side of Venice, one with dilapidated, damaged buildings that only somewhat resemble the glory they once held. I included this in the hellscape to connect the natural world with hell, the same idea that I had talked about earlier. Often hell is depicted and thought of as a destination; a punishment. This is fair, because this is how it is as a christian concept, however in this collage I try to propose a different idea: What if hell is something uniquely of our making, not a divine punishment, but instead a result of our lack of care for eachother and the world around us. Hobbes said that life without society is, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” If this is the case, how can society fix all of these problems? If humans are wretched, how does this wretchedness not permeate the structure of society? In my college, this is precisely what has happened. A lack of care for the earth has turned it into an abstracted hell, a torturous landscape that is a result and culmination of all the actions made by us humans, not that of god, or of nature. Finally, the trees that rest in front of the city are used to this same effect; to give the impression that this is a transformed paradise. The humans that suffer here however, much like Hobbes notes, suffer in the pure natural environment, which is demonstrated in the connection between the trail of people coming from behind a hill, to the people suffering in hell in a similar formation.