Mark Sheeky Artworks

About this painting

A painting developed with the specific theme of 'Liberation' for a fund-raising exhibition by the Sue Ryder charity to be held in the Mall Galleries in London. So, starting the liberation, the painting is about escape, or struggling to escape. The escape here is from fears, or hell, as represented by the skulls and red Tartarusian elements at the base of the painting. At first, I decided to transform the body through elements, making most of the body rock and leaving only the head and face. Later, I decided to make most of the body rock, having just an eye or other fraction of flesh exposed. The figure therefore had not escaped from fear, but was merely emerging. In my concept, a ghostly skull in the background would represent ever present fears, full escape never being possible, and at that point the title of the painting changed from 'The Final Escape Of The Psychological Cosmonaut' to 'The Starcrossed Escape Of The Psychological Cosmonaut' (ie. doomed).

The unusual triangle shape reinforces the theme, it adds to a feeling of upward escape, and is also the point of an inverted pentacle. This makes the work compliant to the Golden Section and references hell and the devil, though ever so gently. Hidden pentacles dominate the composition.

The painting had several phases to it's construction, and 11 years after the initial painting, a new face was given to the figure, and a new frame. Hand cut, I developed some unique software to calculate the exact frame lengths and angles needed for any shape of triangle or quadrilateral frame.