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Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 13, 2013 at 1:58pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

Your portfolio of ‘random illustrations’ are truly enchanting, creating unusual and often unforeseen interactions between classic heroes and villains.  I enjoyed seeing multiple renderings or manifestations of archetypal narratives, as they provoke the viewer with color or decisive cropping.  I prefer this version, for example, of the writer.  Single fingers poking at what looks to be an old typewriter, he is intently focused on his task at hand despite his active surroundings.  The scrolling black framework provides a storybook foil to the more macabre insinuation of ghoulish shadow characters looking on.  While not as intimidating in this scaled down version, the shadow figures are nonetheless marked as different- alien in subtle characteristic ways.  Their white value creates some moral ambiguity, as they are apparitions of more demonstrative figures. They could almost be read as the conflicting psyche of the writer- earlier dream versions of himself, critics, or writers of the past. But their grisly intent is made clearer in the later expanded red version, as another human head becomes none too subtly impaled through the eye.  The saturated crimson in this piece is seen less as a fiery hellish environment, but a pure and intense focus.  Stylistically, the primary red also serves as a nice middle value to the other black and white graphic areas.  It’s interesting how strong of a psychological color plays in these works, as I had to look twice at the black and copy version of the expanded piece.  The seated writer appears to have a grimmer or more determined expression when all color is removed.