Calypso is a nymph, said to be the daughter of Pleione (mother of the Pleiades) and Atlas (the Titan who is forced to hold up the heavens after being on the losing side of the Titanomachy war of the gods).

Zeus was angry with Odysseus (Roman name Ulysses) after Odysseus’ starving crew ate sacred cattle on the island of Helios. Zeus drowned the crew and shipwrecked Odysseus on the isle of Ogygia, inhabited by Calypso. Her name means ‘she who conceals,’ so it is fitting that she keeps Odysseus hidden for seven years, while the whole world is looking for him. She promises him immortal life in exchange for becoming her husband. Odysseus never cedes to her proposal, all the while longing to return to Ithaca and his wife Penelope.

Throughout Homer’s Odyssey, Athena acts as a guardian angel, protecting Odysseus on his journey home. She pled with Zeus to release Odysseus from Calypso. Here we see Athena floating in the sky, protecting Odysseus, while Zeus pulls Odysseus onto a raft to send him home. Calypso apprehensively lurks in the background, watching her beloved being pulled from her clutches.

The post Pierre Charles Tremolieres, Ulysses Lands on the Isle of Calypso, 1737 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

Laurence’s parents were Holocaust survivors but spoke nothing of it to Laurence until later in his life. Since then he has been learning about the Jewish faith and painting his questions about the Holocaust. While working through his ideas on this story of Aaron he says “I realized that Auschwitz is the temple and the goats are us.” In the background we see the gates of Auschwitz, which carry the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” in German (“Work sets you free”).

The post Geoffrey Laurence, Atonement, 2022 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

The post Carl Dobsky, Keeping Warm (Man Setting Himself on Fire), 2022 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

A teenager has carelessly started a fire and it is having an immediate effect upon Nature, as evidenced by the escaping fox. The iconic Mt. Hood (just outside of Portland) can be seen in the distance. In September 2017 teens lit some firecrackers in the Columbia Gorge forest which resulted in the Eagle Creek Fire that burned 50,000 acres and snowed ashes on Portland for days. The climate crisis we are experiencing just compounds fires like these, yet we all seem to be indifferent to news reports on climate change.

The post Aron Johnston, Indifference, 2018 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

The young artist has been caught slacking off while AI paints his painting for him. The flat ladder symbolizes unsuccessful status seeking and the robotic arm is a folly in itself: a high tech piece of equipment made from wood. Chmilar says “The sandwich to me is from a potentially much deeper thought questioning purpose: ‘What would we rather be doing?’ To me, the idea of wanting to cut time off of an art process is deeply philosophical. ‘To have more time for what?’ I ask. Eating bigger sandwiches?”

Chmilar is fascinated by the inherent faults of the human mind, the common desire to clamor for undeserved status, the culture of ‘Fake it ‘til you make it.’ He states that “contradictions abound; many who likely don’t like the market system work directly to its whim. ‘Go, go, go!’ ‘Good enough’ and ‘quantity over quantity’ are ideas that we often dislike when we are the receivers, but we play directly into when we are the producers.”

The post Steve Chmilar, The Automator, 2022 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

At some point in every artist’s career (if not all the time) they find themselves wondering if they should have chosen a different vocation, one filled with wealth and stability. A life in art is risky business. I often say it is like a sickness or an addiction, yet artists cannot help themselves. Calenzo is working on a series about amateur inventors called The Tinkerers; the paintings have allegorical characters who represent choosing a creative life over a stable vocation. Calenzo states that this tinkerer “would like to be remembered as a successor to Houdini, but his plan to escape his iron box and fly back to shore with his Drone Helmet has hit a few snags.”

The post Vincent Calenzo, Drone, 2022 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

Happy Halloween!

The post Victor Vasnetsov, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1887 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

The post Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, 1562 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

The title references the biblical story of Jacob Wrestling the Angel (or possible God), but here Jacob is matched against the specter of the internet, taking the form of a centipede man emanating from an upturned computer monitor, along with references to scientific knowledge, cats, Twitter, and Google. The internet can provide us with a wealth of knowledge yet can lead us down some scary paths too, like getting sucked into the rabbit hole of YouTube. Choose wisely.

The post Carl Dobsky, But By Every Word (Jacob Wrestling the Internet), 2022 first appeared on Narrative Painting.

The artist states “When I was a young man I suffered from an overabundance of confidence coupled with an extreme deficit of good sense (I was going to say ‘common sense’ but that would imply that good sense was a bit more common). Now, as an adult with two boys in their late teens, I can see that this phenomenon was not unique to my adolescence but appears to be a trait of youth in general. Unflinching is a tribute to the false bravado and poor choices that lead those of us who survive our fledgling adulthood to look back and wonder how we are still here.”

The post Aron Johnston, Unflinching, 2021 first appeared on Narrative Painting.