Upper Hand, Illusionals #3

A pair of white legs strides forward while a shadow stands behind, hand on hip. Between the stepping figure and the shadow, a quiet power struggle unfolds. Recalling the elegant legs of fashion illustration, a recurring motif of the Illusionals series, the legs are set into the pixel grid as smooth, textureless surfaces. They disrupt its order and sit on the canvas like another layer of reality, while the shadow remains part of the hand-painted impasto ground. Flat fields of red, pink and violet and sharp contours carry the scene in just a few marks. The tension lives in the gap between the two surfaces: one polished like a printed image, the other thick with paint.