Saturday, November 18, 2006

D'Uomo

I had been intrigued and was searching for images of a pile of bodies, an image which unfortunately is all too common in our modern world – images of massacres. I had also always wanted to paint a dome, and had done several sketches with ladies dancing under a dome – but hadn’t developed this further as it lacked drama and tension. I realized that by putting the two ideas together I could make a political statement – that being, in spite of all of our wonderful structures which attempt to convey our spirituality, we more often manage to create only another type of dome, that of a pile of bodies. After searching for the perfect dome I settled on the dome of the church in Sienna. Its star designs helped to emphasize the spiritual aspect I needed for the dome. The pile of bodies in left almost unfinished, dirty, undetailed, as I had flirted with he idea of just painting a pile of shit under the dome, but decided to make the disgusting heap more shocking, yet somehow amorphous like a pile of dung. This stinking heap under the beauty of the dome helped emphasize the dichotomy. The light from the dome appears in many photos of dome interiors and as a single source of light, it leads the eye upward to heaven. This beam points straight to the worst accomplishments of man. The title D’uomo is a play on the words duomo which mean dome and uomo which means man. 

 



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