I didn’t move to Malta for The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, but it factored in when I decided to make the move. I’m talking about the painting of course, not the actual decapitation of the man. Valetta didn’t even exist when they were lopping off John’s noggin and the severing of said head happened in what’s now Jordan I believe. I don’t care about all that stuff, the history, the faith, that can all sod off. It’s Caravaggio’s colours, light, sense of space, the still action in the painting. The beauty and the violence. The messages. The blood. The signing in John the Baptist’s blood right there, on the huge, five metre canvas, that’s what gets me. Every time I’ve been to the cathedral, and paid the extortionate 12 euros entrance fee, it has got me.
Tag: Art
Father’s Acrylic Gunshot by Jazeen Hollings
My father’s finger nail bed, picked raw from worry, would’ve hugged the trigger of the gun. After hesitating, maybe not, the finger would’ve curled shut. The gun would’ve erupted, its bullet would’ve split his temple. No matter how long he had planned to end his life, even he couldn’t have escaped the surprise of death, which would have eventually trickled away, the deep crease of his brown unfurling, finally soft.
It had probably been a moan not a shot. A tired exhale.
This is what I thought of, in the middle of the quiet and dark hospital room, as I cradled my newborn son.
Colorful as White by Hannah Zhang
When I was little, I always loved watching my sister paint. She would create the most realistic snow capped mountains and the rustiest torn down barns. I would sit next to her and watch her create whole worlds with just a few flicks of her palm. She would give me a blank canvas, and tell me to draw anything I wanted. I hated seeing that blank canvas, it was just a square of nothing, so I would paint streaks of color everywhere. Turquoise, maroon, magenta. Off they went, covering every corner of that ugly blankness.