MANIFESTATIONS OF DEATH
Manifestations of Death, a thematically united series of 27 oil paintings is grounded on a simple visual dilemma: how does one physically portray nothingness? The incomprehensible can only be grasped obliquely, so I have constructed a crescendo of metaphors leading up to the bleakest embodiment of this disembodied concept. The continuity of the theme is echoed in the repeated use of certain objects in several pictures: masks, stars, bones, cut flowers and dead trees. These, in turn, are grouped by their shared perspective:
Paintings # 1-4: Death Isolated by Life
5-8: Flowers
9-11: Trees
12-13: Cemeteries
14-16: A Child's Perspective
17-19: Death as the Result of Aging
20-23: Death as a Result of Predation
24-26: Skull Masks
27: The Thing Itself
Taken together, Manifestations of Death creates a metastasizing dialectic that is both varied and focused, a powerful exploration of the one inescapable event inlife: its end.
Manifestations of Death, a thematically united series of 27 oil paintings is grounded on a simple visual dilemma: how does one physically portray nothingness? The incomprehensible can only be grasped obliquely, so I have constructed a crescendo of metaphors leading up to the bleakest embodiment of this disembodied concept. The continuity of the theme is echoed in the repeated use of certain objects in several pictures: masks, stars, bones, cut flowers and dead trees. These, in turn, are grouped by their shared perspective:
Paintings # 1-4: Death Isolated by Life
5-8: Flowers
9-11: Trees
12-13: Cemeteries
14-16: A Child's Perspective
17-19: Death as the Result of Aging
20-23: Death as a Result of Predation
24-26: Skull Masks
27: The Thing Itself
Taken together, Manifestations of Death creates a metastasizing dialectic that is both varied and focused, a powerful exploration of the one inescapable event inlife: its end.
#1 Premonition
oil on canvas
24" x 30"
oil on canvas
24" x 30"
Manifestations of Death
