The work uses a chess problem where 8 queens are placed on the board and none of them is in direct line of fire of any of the others to illustrate the nuclear powers’ Mexican standoff. Any (reckless) move leads to a dark scenario appropriately called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). What is at the stake is nothing less but life itself.

Another view on migration, this time with the feeling of homesickness or missing, accentuated by the focal area of the work being in the first panel, to which eye always comes back to. The pursuit of happiness is an instinct shared by all, and it rarely comes without a price.

The sky is willing, but man has other plans. Never before in the history has life been more valued, and at the same time what sustains it more lightly.

To say that pedophilic clergy are “tools of Satan” in the 21st century is either bigoted or intentionally misleading. Aside the fact that we’re told by this Dark ages narrative to neglect reason, it proves to show that no institution is corruption vaccinated and understresses the need for re-evaluation of world views and various systems governing it.

Being a lifelong Iron Maiden fan I decided to make this one as a tribute to their music and excellent artworks from Derek Riggs, both of which made a lasting impact on me – one of the devils is loosely based on one appearing on their “The number of the beast” album cover.

Shock is a natural human reaction to an awkward or dangerous situation which artists have long tried to induce to make a point, so now we have in art all kinds of distorted figures, urinals, faeces and animal carcasses, to name a few. And what is art, if not a description of the world, either by imitation or by negation. And what is the world, if not a place or a state of recurring shock, so much so that it has become something we got accustomed to, and consequentially unbothered by it much.

The work depicts such a world where an idiom taken literally is seen as nothing more than a curiosity.

Brain is wired into thinking it knows something when it actually does not. According to Brain games TV series my son watches many people find it difficult i.e. to explain how a simple zip works, or whatever else we take for granted. While it may have had evolutionary sense or reason to develop this way, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re not always as smart as we think. “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto!”

“All games contain the idea of death” – Jim Morrison
On the surface level this really might seem as a humorous depiction of the above mentioned quote, but when one asks who plays the game humor becomes inappropriate. Haven’t we all at some point felt like some mad golfer’s amusement?

A twist in my sobriety 🙂 Not quite, this is just a continuation of my exploration of painting substance – the idea is to make an abstract painting figurative. Or to be more precise, to marry the two. Neither of the qualities no longer stands alone but is expanded by the other into a new semantic field, meaningfully distilled and coquetting with the visionary or the surreal.

Remember those clouds in comic books with thunders and hammers in them, depicting one’s anger? Well, that’s what I was aiming at, and an abstraction came naturally as a means to do it. I was never much inclined to abstract art, and even if I understood one’s desire to do an abstract painting I never understood the desire to do a hundred of them. However, I reconsidered this while making this one because, quite surprisingly, I found the process more or less the same as when doing a figurative painting, not at all fundamentally different in what matters as I expected. And since abstraction deals with more authentic levels of expression for which it takes less time to execute the gratification is more imminent. I’d even say it is more selfish because it takes only the artist into account. In the end, it was a fun thing to do, so I think I am going to do a whole series. Maybe even a hundred. After all, painting is a selfish business 🙂