The Child: Part Three

Do I want to represent the child in the story, or the horror a child faces. Is it all going to be on one painting on canvas, or wood? Oil or acrylic? I decided that the painting is about feelings that transcend one incident, but how to depict raw emotion. I remembered an incident I faced at sixteen. I was on the 3rd floor of a car park and standing by the elevator when a man grabbed me by the throat and started dragging me towards a car. I could see, but not see, hear, but not hear. I couldn’t process what was happening at that moment. My conscious being was gone. I couldn’t move or think. It wasn’t until he almost had me at the car that my primal instinct took over and a scream rose from my belly out of my mouth. All that existed was that scream.
I knew it had to be a screaming child, and had to represent the moment when our conscious mind doesn’t exist. I chose a triptych to represent a feeling of a forced divide and decided on a primitive rendition of a child.

Here is the sketchbook drawing and then the final painting, which is acrylic on wood.
He is trying to hide, but he cannot escape seeing the horror. The white of his face represents innocence, but also fear, and is the colour of mourning and death in the middle east. The landscape is a desert of camouflage.

stay tuned for The Mother: Part Four

child portrait painting camouflage primitive art