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The title "Setting Sun" is inspired by the 1996 song of the same name by the Chemical Brothers, featuring the vocals of Noel Gallagher. This painting depicts a Nordic landscape (Scotland) featuring a figure seen from behind, gazing out at a sunset that takes on a slightly toxic or irradiated appearance.
During one of our trips to Scotland back then, we were reading in our B&B one evening about a small island that had been inaccessible for decades because experiments involving anthrax pathogens had been conducted there. Yet—filled with romantic feelings for the landscape—we had enjoyed a picnic that very afternoon while gazing at that exact island...
In this sense, it is a quintessential "Gerhard": it combines an idyllic, though not entirely flawless, atmosphere with references to Caspar David Friedrich, the Expressionists, and, of course, Edvard Munch.