Left hanging

A photograph a good friend of mine recently took at the Fiona Banner exhibition in the Tate Britain inspired me to paint this image. As a starting point I came up with a typical scenario of our 'hero' pilot being locked in a deadly air combat finale with the stories 'villain'. In brief, the back story of our hero's aggressive and reckless nature has unintentionally cost the life of his wingman during an ill-fated combat mission. The guilt and anger he feels for the loss of his wingman has become evident through his own irresponsibleness towards his life - he looses his faith. The hero eventually overcomes and defeats the enemy force only for his fighter to sustain heavy damage in the process. Loosing altitude and descending towards the ground our hero attempts to eject but a systems malfunction occurs trapping him in the cockpit, the only option left is to reverse thrust and deploy the braking parachutes. Preparing for impact he crashes through the roof of a church only to be saved by the planes parachutes becoming entangled amongst roof joists, stopping the jet just inches away from a certain death. His faith is restored.