Title: The Virus, No IQ Test Required.
Medium Mixed: Oil paint over Acrylic on canvas.
Size: H-29½ x L- 23½ x W-1½.
Year: Summer of 2021
Status: Available

Grandmother folktales were about a moral geometry of life and death. She spoke of duality and said that only a few could orient their life force to walk into the sprit world.  As a child it was understood that all humans must push beyond the safety of home and that every person must venture into the world in order too embody life. In folktales grandmother spoke of lost sprits that are the emblems of misfortune. She said that an elder had crossed the sprit world and brought back the gift of curiosity.  A valuable gift which in realty was a curse.  A curse where life and death often wore the same mask.

Within the family it was understood that images of death were to be respected and not  toyed with.  It was made clear that every day a duality of opposition is at war and that it was up to every individual to control fear of life and death.  The title of the painting “The Virus, No IQ Test Required.” is a personification of duality.  The top half of the painting echoes a mythological image of Medusa. Unlike the Medusa this masked portrait emanates apotropaic energy out into the cosmos. The bottom half of the painting is a remainder of mortality.  A circler shape of the colors radiating out from the center are a remainder that all life is finite.