Hell Painting

This painting took 4 months to complete, working on it 3 to 4 hours per day, and excluding all the hours of research involved. This involved the artist looking into thousands of images of slavery, which was not most pleasant, and he visited lots of museums to get inspiration such as the Docklands museum in East London. It is the first of a series of paintings by the artist focusing on revisiting ancient myths, giving them a contemporary twist. It is also inspired by old masters such as: Hieronymus Bosch, William Holgarth and modern lowbrow artists such as Robert Williams, Todd Schorr and many more. This painting illustrates hell. It starts with a depiction of heaven in the top left corner, represented as a big office full of angels working on computers where Jesus acts as the boss holding a symbolic baby lamp, firing Adam and Eve from paradise and throwing them down to hell on earth. Their punishment will be to join the infernal mass of enslaved workers, entering the rat race, losing their immortality and knowing pain to survive. The central pyramid symbolises the hierarchical society. On its top, the eye, symbol of the Free Masons, also figuring on US Dollar bills, embodies conspiracy and the secret societies that are governing the masses. An ATM is found at the heart of the pyramid, representing modern society’s obsession with money. Underneath, hundreds of slaves are working for the pyramid. They are tortured by cute looking cartoon characters. The artist’s intention is to show in a surreal way that everyone is hypnotized, believing in a illusory democracy that is just a mask hiding an evil empire, dominated by Mickey Mouse, Mr Burns and Scrooge Mc Duck. The artist uses popular culture and cartoon characters to create metaphors everyone can relate to. Mumra from the ThunderCats as the evil mummy is a humorous statement of the elite few sitting top of the hierarchy exploiting the masses. Images of sex, materialism, mass advertising, mascot logos and extreme violence are the main focus of the bottom part of the painting expressing the way the artist sees western civilisation today. If you have a closer look at the drawing, you will see lots of slaves and in-between them, characters from Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings reminding the viewer of this surreal hell and at the same time, a way in which the artist pays his respects to the pioneer master painter of the Renaissance. The juxtaposition of popular modern culture and references to the Old Masters shows that whilst the themes exposed in this painting have been visited throughout history, each time under a different light, they are firmly linked to the nature of the humanity. The artists shows a world changing and evolving through the use of different technologies, and the advancement of sciences and arts, yet the presence of greed materialism, slavery, violence and misery seems to remain intact. To view more of the artists work, please visit his web site: www.thekrah.com

Painting:Acrylic on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:18.9 W x 23.6 H x 0.4 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.