A King in His Deathbed invites contemplation of the unknowable qualities of death. Death may be tragic or unexpected and met with mourning. It may be natural and expected, followed by a celebration of life. Death unites all in a shared experience but each culture has its own way of treating this inevitable event. Through a broad palette and fluid organic forms, the work expresses a wide variety of emotions carrying the viewer through a boundless journey. The viewer chases meaning, as elements hint at what we know consciously, while ultimately unfamiliar imagery pulls its meaning from shared innate memories and collective unconscious so we are left chasing a pure, concrete meaning.
Viewers will be joined in a moment of confusion, interpreting culturally ambiguous, non-phonetic symbols hinting at various scripts, so that everyone reads the painting the same way. The scripts allude to written language, because memories, whether written on paper or through oral tradition, is all that remains once people pass on. Overlapping planes create a sense of infinite space hinting at the inscrutable nature of death.
The viewer remains lost in the work which has no beginning, no end, no single foreground and no single background, uniting people in a moment of confusion and deep thought; in a plane similar to that of the infitisimal state of non-living. Viewers will share an new experience, similar to our own encounter with death which are never complete, and are journeys towards a truth that we will only find in death. We can only know the truth of death in death.