For centuries, various cultures have imagined the human condition as a struggle between these "better angels," as Lincoln called them, and our "demons," whether as literal manifestations or as metaphors. From the events of September 11th, to the pictures from Abu Ghraib and a flooded New Orleans, global events, so far, this new century have done little to inspire a sense of progress, or of the maturing of a world civilization, and have led the artist Bruce Linn, when thinking of Lincoln's edifying appeal, to acknowledge that there must be "worse demons" as well.

Linn was influenced by the works of 19th-century Symbolist artists, like Odilon Redon and Arnold Bocklin, and the satiric works of James Ensor and the Czech Illustrators Zdenek Mezl and Pavel Brazda.