"I oscillate between deliberate symbolism and incongruous juxtapositions. The juxtapositions are suggested by visual cues; ie, a portion of a mechanical device might have a similar appearance to a skeletal part, to which I might then append a human form. My paintings tend to be largely, though not always, symbolic." (p. 21 Humanist Transhumanist Raymond & Vakras - Symbolism Surrealism Fantastic Art. ISBN 9780646521886)
This image is one of those images in which appear incongruous juxtapositions without symbolic meaning. The figure's legs, which are compiled from an animal's skull (the skull of a fox), are clamped onto an engine which itself is part skull. The figure's arms too are compiled from animal skulls (mouse skulls), and are raised in the manner of wings attempting flight. This figure, clamped onto an engine and with useless wings which cannot possibly fulfil their implied function, suggested the title. The title in this instance thus is an afterthought.

As with other images of mine, I had drawn a figure without a background. The crumbling building with its broken dome which I used as a background for this painting is from Bosch's Temptation of St. Anthony (left).

Commentary on the term "Pyrrhic Victory":

The term Pyrrhic Victory is the western version of what the Greeks called a "Kadmean Victory" (Καδμεία νίκη).

The term "Kadmean Victory" derives from the battle between the brothers Eteokles and Polynikes descendants of Kadmus, founder of Thebes (Greece) who kill one–another. It is of a victory which is as great a loss as is a victory. It is a term that is employed continuously in the Greek world, from Pausanias to Anna Komnena.

Another version of this work with the title emended, Flightless Kadmean Victory: contra Bosch, is intended for 2010, in which a similar figure is situated within the ruins of Byzantine and Armenian structures. Though the elements from Bosch, and those elements inspired by Bosch, were an incidental solution which provided a background for my figure, the elements inspired by Bosch in my subsequent version will be deliberately incorporated into it. In his paintings such as The Garden of Earthly Delights, and Haywain, Bosch used motifs from Italian renaissance art (which are unacknowledged by contemporary scholarship) to condemn as evil the western European awakening from what we today call the "Dark Ages". Bosch propounds a fundamentalist Catholic condemnation of the science and philosophy of the Greeks which, preserved by Byzantium, was being transmitted to the west. "Knowledge" for the fundamentalist Catholic Bosch, was "superbia" and therefore evil. Had Bosch had his way, Holland would have rejected the Renaissance and would have been Europe's medieval Afghanistan. Hence my initial incongruous, accidental, juxtapositions will in this version be deliberate, specifically chosen for their symbolic significance. The victory of secularism and science over the superstition of Christian beliefs (Catholic fundamentalism) could still be a Kadmean triumph if the uncritical appeasement of the superstition of Islam by the west continues to proceed.

Bosch used motifs from Renaissance Italian painting against themselves. The triumphal carriages of "pagan" deities were turned by Bosch into a haywain. The geological formations which appeared in the works of the Italians were incorporated by Bosch into his own works and were placed in the stage before which the Judaic "fall of man" is played out. In the drawing for Flightless Kadmean Victory: contra Bosch, above, I am using these same ideas against Bosch. My "Victory" is integrated into a "triumphal carriage", which is drawn by a winged snake coming from within my "victory". The snake for the Greeks was a benevolent protector, a force of good, and possessor of wisdom. My victory is traversing through a landscape scarred and in ruins which spreads out before the Italian geological form (top left).