In 2009, at the time Bill Bryson OBE was Chancellor of Durham University, Chris Gollon was invited to become a Fellow and First Artist in Residence of the prestigious Institute of Advanced Study. He was the first non-academic to be invited. One of the IAS’s main aims is to inspire new thinking on big themes, by bringing together academics and thinkers from around the world, and from very diverse areas of study. Chris Gollon’s task, along with a small group of the world’s leading thinkers, was to describe what it means to be human in 21st century. This work is a study for a larger painting entitled 'Angels', which was part of a mini-series Gollon produced during his Fellowship, looking at the Great Chain of Being or the Scala Naturae.