Literature: In his upcoming art book, which will be published at the end of 2025, Bigum writes about this work: “In 1995, I had been revolving for several weeks around an old painting that hung inside Enghave Antik, Vesterbro. Every time I passed the store I couldn't help but stop, shadow with my hand and look into it. One summer day I bought it for DKK 500. The painting strangely hit many sore spots in me. An magpie pecks a mouse under a tree late winter afternoon. The picture measures 35×35 cm, is from 1908, and was painted by a G. Mölck. I was very happy with the picture and its symbolist character triggered something in me. It got the place of honour at home, just above my writing and drawing table. Since in the following six months I wrote a lot on my second collection of poems, and therefore found myself at the table a lot, it was precisely the painting that I looked directly at when I straightened up. It must have inspired subconsciously, because one day a few months later, was the sketch for this painting, which when it was finished painting was titled The Killing. The remarkable thing is that it was only much later that I realized that the small painting had actually laid the foundation stone for my own painting. It's not because I'm not awake, but the inspiration simply came in sideways and unconsciously. Where the story in the old painting differs from that in mine, you as a reader and viewer must decide. Perhaps the painting is inspired by the rawness I now began to experience existed in the art world. These were some very rough years, those nineties, because all the budding young artists of my generation could sense that it was possible to walk completely new untrodden paths in art. Cost what it would.” Literature: Reproduced on the artist's webpage www.martinbigum.dk under the series “Millennium”. Exhibited: Aarhus Kunstmuseum, 1996. Exhibited: Retinal Circus, Copenhagen, 1996. Provenance: Nils Stærk, Copenhagen. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.