Stillborne

“Dragging their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous repair.”

Medusa-Sylvia Plath

24′ x 36″
Oil on canvas

I’ve painted Medusa before, or at least her ghost, which was if memory serves, prompted by reading some Jack London.

This one-partially inspired by Plath’s gorgeous poem about her mother-also supposes what might have happened had the Gorgon queen avoided being dispatched by Perseus’s sword, and gone on to conceive Poseidon’s progeny.

Yes I know, she has a head of eels instead of snakes, but it felt rather more in keeping with Athena’s wrathful spite mocking the mariner God, as well as a nice chance to continue a symbolic trope I started with Origins of a Black Hole.

I’ll be showing the piece at Copro gallery, for Chet Zar’s first Dark Art Society Group Show this Saturday through October.

The return of Eris of Troy-the Teutonic Crusade

“Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own.”

—Malaclypse the Younger,Principia Discordia,

Long term followers of my work may recognize that this one looks remarkably similar to a piece I did way back in 2003. It is in fact a darker, nastier, little ancestor of that original painting.

So why revisit it?

Well, firstly-in the twelve years since it original inception,  I like to think I have learned a thing or three about daubing.

Its a piece that combines the Northern Crusades of the 15th Century-more notably the mass suicide of 4000 Pagans at the fortress of Pilenai, and the Greek story of Eris of Troy.

Eris of course is the Goddess of discord-so named because of her wedding crashing turn at the nuptials of Thetis and Peleus ,tossing golden apples amongst pretty maids  Hera, Athene and Aphrodite and kicking off the Trojan War.

On a personal level,she recalls a period of dark machinations in the past that revisited itself like a festering plague recently, and as such was if not an unwelcome, but timely reminder of the tumult, devastation and chaos that can befall us all, when our guard is lowered.

So be weary of who comes to your wedding.

The piece will be on show at Hyaena gallery through 1st September to 1st October