(Blood and Flowers)
Vic Slt
Found 05/2015, Goodwill (2222 and Lamar)

A study in contrasts, (Blood and Flowers) combines imagery of culture and sophistication with a powerful symbol of primal violence and negation. Both sides of the image carry their own weight, working in tandem to create a balanced image.

In the background, an ethereal symbol resembling a glyph from a pictographic language. Even without the scaffolding of flowers, this sort of rune holds the weight of years, of culture and learning. With its strange floral decoration, it assumes a religious weight, becoming something like a temple.

Smeared and dripping across the canvas, a bloody handprint in a circle. An image of anarchic anger, it suggests violence, rebellion, a fist raised against society, against the elegance and refinement suggested by the decorated glyph. Below the primary handprint, a number of smaller symbols are furiously blotted out, an obsessive negation of the written form. And yet, for all its young anger, in some ways the handprint is the more ancient symbol: the first trace of humanity, red ochre smeared on a cave wall. Is this the beginning of a cycle, the young destroying the symbols of the old with a symbol that is older still?