The Ice Maiden 2009

Oil on canvas
61 x 45.5 cm

This is a painting of an eerie image of a dislocated head leaning askance, in the neck of an urn. The watery eyes in the detached or decapitated head glance to the extreme right leading the viewer off the picture plane to an undefined object of focus. The cranium has an icy colourless while the lower part of the faced tucked into the urn’s cavity has an unworldly glow. There is an ambiguity as to whether the head is lifeless for there is no evidence of physical degeneration. If indeed dead, this body fragment/part is painted in the tradition of Gericault’s Dead and Severed Heads. It is also inspired by the story of the consequences of the greed of Cassim and his wife from the  tale of Ali Baba from the One Thousand and One Nights.

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