Death of Contemplation Print

With my painting Death of Contemplation, the title comes from my lament for a time before incessant distraction. When you could fall into a deep, thoughtful meditation and slowly mull over an idea until it blossomed into something wonderful. The tranquility and quietening of the mind was like being submerged in a peaceful lucid dream, relaxing and thrilling at the same time. As a contemporary artist and painter, I relish those moments. contemporary art depicting death idioms The content of the painting however takes on a more dark turn. Based on idioms of death the “characters” associations and literal depictions of phrases relating to death create a macabre jumble of imagery. Not exactly your typical contemporary art. On the far left a microphone records no sound in its emblematic expression of dead air. Next to it a dead end sign grows fruit with some already dead on the vine. At the head of the coffin rests a dead eye, contextually out of place from its normal nautical setting, it echoes a death’s head expression with empty eye sockets and mouth agape. The severed hand holds the black 8s and Aces of the dead man’s hand. Above the dead jelly man Humpty Dumpty whips a dead horse, locked in a dead heat with a living horse. The death’s head door is as dead as the doornail hammered into it and below a pair of dead man’s shoes sits abandoned. The Dodo is not quite as dead as a dodo, but soon will be with the thirteen coils of the hangman’s noose ready for action. Behind the dodo is a spectre of the undead, looming in the darkness. In the sky a symbolic representation of Hypnos (personification of sleep) flies by the moon while mirrored on the opposite side is the Hypnos’ twin brother Thanatos, represented by the inverted torch symbol and the Greek personification of death. Last is the sickle mounted on the wall, which occasionally substitutes for the scythe—the weapon held by the Grim Reaper…Mr. Death himself.