In his diary in an entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Munch wrote:
I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.
He later described his inspiration for the image:
One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked. This became The Scream.
Munch was an expressive painter and was not primarily interested in literal renderings of what he had seen. It has been suggested that the proximity of both a slaughterhouse and a lunatic asylum to the site depicted in the painting may have offered some inspiration. The scene was identified as being the view from a road overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedøya, from the hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work, Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was a patient at the asylum at the foot of Ekeberg.
For the 5th Scream I painted Laura, mirroring her brother's feelings of deep anxiety, as the scream of nature made its way through the Ekeberg area, reaching her in its course.
The painting of Laura, the Scream and the story behind it were my main inspirations when working on this project.
Thank you for your time
and for viewing my entry into the 5th Scream Digital Painting Contest!
