Painting as an anthropological constant

Inspiration

The beginning of that semester was very promising, I wanted to continue the topic of Fragrances and exploring different scents through the painting. But it turned out that not everything is as simple as it did when we started quarantine. And then everything broke, there was no interest or desire to create, because we began to isolate ourselves from everything and everyone in our residence between the four walls, at first we heard that you can not go out if not needed, you can not go for walks, you can only go out when you need solve something important.

Time seemed to stop, but more and more I saw articles and videos of how Easter was talked about. How do people worry about celebrating themselves, if at all? I’m worried, what if all the shops are closed at once? What we even think about.
Can we remember what precedes Easter? Christmas? Yes, of course, but the month just before Easter is fasting, during which people who practice their faith or support traditions do not eat all the products of animal origin. Is Easter coming and is it all over? Do we wait months of fasting to eat meat again later? Without thinking about what the human body has now endured and what it is showing us. What’s the point of all this? Happy images of rabbits and hens on Easter packages began to touch me deeply. And as if no one was embarrassed that we would immediately find them dead on the shelves and then on our friends’ plates. Were these animals happy at all? Is the holy festival so clean? Or is it the victim again? But does Jesus say he is the last sacrifice?

That’s why I created an altar that only opens at Easter and shows our essence. The closed altar is a child and a wolf, they are clean, have no bad thoughts and are in paradise gardens. When we open the altar, we see on the outside that other animals are added to the wolf and man, which we forget in everyday life, we use, but we are not friends. However, we cannot divide animals into edible / inedible. All are white to represent life.

When we open the altar, we see a figure sitting at a table, this is the last supper. Only one man celebrates Easter in isolation and shows everyone the dishes on the table, a set of knives and one book in his large closet. On the table plates of meat prepared on the fire. The flesh is black to indicate death. The golden frame sends us to the icons, which shows us that it is a sacred phenomenon and a picture of a mountain that will never change.

Form

Acrylic on wood, three boards measuring 30×80 60×80 30×80 on both sides, connected to form the altar.

I chose wood because I wanted to achieve authenticity and to make this altar double-sided. I chose a beech tree in the form of prepared glued boards. Black acrylic varnish was applied as a base. There were also minor problems when painting the image, when the acrylic was applied on one side, the boards began to bend, after applying the acrylic image from the other side, the problem was settled.