Masada

oil on panel, 13″ x 12″, 2021

The only story in the Talmud about Herod the Great is that he bred pigeons. So I anachronistically placed him at the scene of the destruction of his palaces at Masada.

The bizarre shapes of the buildings were dictated by the grain of the wood panel I worked on and lend the image a dis-ease. I used an ochre-red-based light and terre-vert-green-like shadow in the rest of the image (not the fire and sky) instead of being so reliant on value contrasts. It’s an attempt at a Northern-art-egg composition, in which the crown is the most forward element – where an egg would most protrude. The stone-like surface in the physical paint is an homage to the Dura-Europos wall paintings.

Arthur Polonsky taught that painting is story-telling. If you argued, he’d respond, “Rembrandt?”