Hands Painting

199- Hands 2014 - Oil on Canvas (100cm x 50cm) This painting is inspired by a recent exercise to paint hands, the charge on the Manosque coat of arms. Hands grasp objects, support, pray, and naturally mesh as one is a natural complement of another. I am not Manosquin, but Paulais, from St. Paul lez Durance a nearby town in the forest. The goat, rampant, a charge in the St Paul blazon, is seen insinuating itself into the otherwise perfect arrangement of interlocking hands, as I do into the Manosquin art scene. Maybe though, this is the leg of a faun or satyr, beloved of French and artists from Manet, to Picasso, Debussy and Nijinsky. Classically they are fond of wine and of all sensual pleasures, sleeping, playing musical instruments or engaged in voluptuous dances with nymphs (Fauns, not the French or the artists). Described by Hesiod as a race good for nothing and unfit for work, and, like all the gods dwelling in forests and fields, greatly dreaded by mortals, they reinforce the allegory of an interloping Paulais. Clearly the final matching penis did not arrive by default.