Art Blog #6: NEW BODY OF WORK

After completing the breakthrough piece that I described in my last post, my art has included much more narrative than in the past. Stories are emerging in my paintings. The act of painting has provided a key for me to unlock and personalize universal themes that for millennia have been passed on from one generation to another as fairy tales and myths.
 
My recent paintings have focused on Beauty and the Beast. The Beast is an abuser, a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, a Minotaur, the devil, a pretender, and a creature devoid of feeling and empathy. Beauty is naïve, seductive, wily, the victim, the traumatized, the denier, yet also the one who can be in charge, manipulating the Beast behind-the-scenes.
 
Sometimes, the images are grotesque. There are monsters in the paintings. There is destruction, blood, and guts. Other times, there is whimsy and humor as Beauty disdainfully dismisses, disregards, or castrates the Beast metaphorically. The strength of Beauty astonishes.
 
The painting above is titled, simply, “The Beast”. It is painted on 24” x 24” high density polyethylene with acrylics. This painting is the first in the series. Please let me know what kind of impact this image has on you.