Sustained Investigation #15

This is the second section of my much larger work confronting materialism. In this section there are three figures. Unlike the previous section where the person was much more sickly and greenish, these figures are warmer and softer. The three women are wrapped up in a large snake, which curls around them and on and off the page. I kept a dark background to keep emphasis on the figures. Behind the women there is a pile of burning $50 bills, burning up and out of the page.

This section of the project contains a much more direct confrontation of money and greed, as well as money's connection to women's bodies and the validity of them. The snake, colored in the same shade of green as the money, is less of a snake and more of a manifestation of money, and it's hold on the self esteem of women in themselves. While the oil paintstik was still wet, I scraped in an excerpt from "Paradise Lost", an epic poem by John Milton, a biblical story told from Lucifer's perspective. The scene I worked into the composition is when the snake is in Eden, and he goes on a very voyeuristic monologue about Eve's body and his jealousy at the human's being allowed to engage in "lust" while he is sequestered to the shadows. I thought that this expression of greed and objectification was a good transfer of the concept of money "being the root of all evil", so to somehow transfer "the devil" from being an old and cut and dry representation of temptation into a more current discussion of the possible negative effects that money can have on people.

I think that this section fulfilled the direct confrontation of money in the context of this project. I stuck with my use of bright and warm colors within the figures, but the surrounding elements are much darker and done in cooler colors. I think that the project fits within the broader project, however, I do intend to go back and add more elements other than just the money and the snake, since the previous section had more background elements to communicate the message.