Review: Red Skull - Lena Semenkova Feature

by NDK Creative Artist

Red Skull seems to be such a departure from everything else Lena does and that alone makes it interesting. I’m not usually a fan of still life art, though it seems to be almost a traditional requirement for all fine artists to paint still life images, or bowls of fruit as studies in preparation for more complex works.

I know from reading and many discussions with Marcelle La Cour, and with other painters, that the way Fine Artists (including film makers and photographers) look at light is very different from how most of us consider or even observe it.

Also, Lena’s images are generally about people, they contain and refer to humanity in a very clear way, and this artwork maintains that human connection.

Red Skull seems to be something of a commentary on alcohol. A kind of fat hip flask, with a grinning crazy one-eyed red skull wearing a pirate’s bandanna on his cranium, staring out of his label.

The label is a crisp parchment on the surface of the glass and the name of this hooch is clearly blazoned: Red Skull in the lower foreground of the label. What is in the bottle, and there is definitely something in it, is dark and shadowed and blends seamlessly with the shadows that are slightly behind and to the right of the image as we look at it; this is a very subtle message.

A monarch butterfly is perched on the cap as if about to sip or seeking entry to the contents of the bottle. It cannot get in. At the foot of the bottle just below the label and to its right as we look at it is another butterfly. It is quite plainly lifeless, a victim of the contents. And below this in faded typeface is the caption “Try in this life…OR ANOTHER” and a small red ‘X’ is the period.

Alcohol, has always for me, represented man’s flirt with death, for it is a poison, and when one drinks, one is drinking controlled amounts of a poison, and most people never seem to realize that this is what they are doing.

I know from later discussion with Lena that this particular piece was a commission, and for me it’s a clever statement that says more than most still life images, which to me are always more a demonstration of technique, than a communication of any substance with few rare exceptions.

The shoes of Van Gogh for example (and you have to see them to believe this) are to me a remarkable still life painting because it is such a detailed rendition that the shoes cease to be oil on canvas, rather you feel like they are real shoes and that is such a remarkable demonstration of technique that it is no wonder they have taken on a life and fame of their own. Red Skull, like all of Lena’s art works, says something about the realities of life and this is why I picked this still life image as part of this Free Articulator Feature.

The Red Skull has for me a jaunty, piratical air to it, it flirts with death, in some cruel macabre joke, “Avast, ye swab! Drink this little death to have some fun! Not too much mind!”

Feature Index

1. Lena Semenkova - Camouflage of Contradictions
2. Digital Art and Photomanipulation
3. Review: The Imitator
4. Review: The Waiting
5. Review: Superstar
6. Interview Part 1
7. Review: The Kingdom
8. Review: Like a Bird
9. Interview Part 2
10. Review: Ghost Rider
11. Review: All the snowflakes must die
12. Interview Part 3
13. Review: Red Skull
14. Review: Prisoner of Conscience
15. Review: War
16. Conclusion

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If you'd rather we did all the hard work, you're in luck. Here's a list of articles that are related to this one:

• Review: Ghost Rider - Lena Semenkova Feature
• Review: Like a Bird - Lena Semenkova Feature
• Review: The Imitator - Lena Semenkova Feature
• Review: The Waiting - Lena Semenkova Feature
• Review: Superstar - Lena Semenkova Feature