American Gothic #5

12” X 12” X 1.5”

Acrylic on Canvas

 In creating this foreboding piece, I chose to rework an earlier, failed painting of mine. The geometric shapes flanking the two dark characters like a decorative border, had represented letters from the Roman Alphabet. The shapes had a Rune-like quality, so I kept them. To reinterpret Grant Wood’s 1930 painting, I replaced the traditional characters with classic monsters and reset the scene for nighttime. Initially, I was going to pair Dracula with The Wolf Man, but decided to keep his partner female, much like Wood’s two figures. I chose Carmilla, a female vampire from Josephe Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel, which predates Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” by 25 years. The two Gothic characters exemplify the “Spirit” of the artwork’s title quite nicely.