The Company of Wolves Painting

Little Red Riding Hood is full of subtexts on women and the dangers of growing up. Some say the red cloak is symbolic of a girl's entry to womanhood marked by menstrual blood. While composing this painting, I was merely thinking about how young women tend to love a dangerous man. The cityscape in the background is reminiscent of New York. I lived there for a few years and it happened organically. The forest began to remind me of Central Park and it just sort of happened. I was going to call the painting "Fairytale of New York" but it is a very loose vision of New York and I like the theme of the girl becoming a woman and falling prey to the wolf in a different way. The question is "did the wolf fall prey to her?" That was always my original vision. Neil Jordan's film version of The Company of Wolves (1984) is about the journey of a young girl into womanhood, which can be interpreted as her menstruating for the first time The wolf in this version of the tale is in fact a werewolf, which comes to the newly menstruating Red Riding Hood in the forest, in the form of a charming hunter. He turns into a wolf and eats her grandmother, and is about to devour Red Riding Hood as well, but she is equally seductive and ends up lying with the wolf man. I like symbolism in a painting and I like to bring a surrealism to my work. I am trying to decrease my narrative but it is always a struggle as I enjoy a story behind my painting. I have recently gone back to oil painting but with a new energy. I am using palette knives for painting instead of brushes and I think it gives a painting more life. In this painting I also experimented with various techniques to get the paint to splatter and drip. The texture in the grass is my favourite part. It is also very bright and striking in mood.