Helen of Troy
So Zeus seduced Leda in the form of a swan, and so their offspring, which included Helen, were born from eggs. Helen, who grew up in Sparta, was the most beautiful woman around, and so many men competed for her affections. She came to marry Menelaus but later escaped with the Trojan Paris Alexandrus. This all led to the famous Trojan War, which eventually brought total destruction on Troy. Helen can be a complex figure, and the treatment of her varies widely in the writings pertaining to the Trojan War. Sometimes Helen is treated as a seductress who is either indifferent to or delighted by the destruction that surrounds her and that she perpetuates. At other times Helen is quite innocent and is just caught up in a situation that is far too big for her to do anything about. One way or the other, Helen seems to embody this or that aspect of war: either the remorseless destruction, or the helpless futility.
I had done a drawing of Helen breaking out from the egg, an action that suggests struggle. One liberty that I took with it was that Helen is shown fully grown, not as a newborn. The depiction of her breaking from the egg suggested, for me, the struggle against the suffocating experience of the war, and the desire to break free from the confines of it. When I came around to painting the idea it seemed natural to put this in the environment of the city's destruction as that most reflected the carnage of war. So my Helen is overwhelmed by it all, a woman without options in a situation that overpowers her. In the manner of her birth she is breaking out of an egg, but also struggling against claustrophobic conditions that have kept her imprisoned.