In the emotional jungle

[mal mcilwraith]

a portrait of the fear that lurk in my emotional jungle

[francois]

Scary! Is it a lobster?

[mal mcilwraith]

It is actually based on a coconut crab from Vanuatu.

Though I think it might have been feeding on toxic waste from a nuclear power station - it is fairly deformed after I was finished with it.


Thanks for asking.



Mal

[luxborealis]

Definitely fearsome! Again, great creativity, Mal.

One thing I find distracting are the artifacts along some of the dark edges that seem to be caused by posterization. Their clearly (at least to photographers) digital/photographic origin I find incongruent with the feel of mental terror from the work. While they add to the feeling of discomfort which adds to this feeling, I still find them distracting as part of the craft. Does that make sense? But, maybe it's just me.

[mal mcilwraith]

Terry


Your observations do make sense - I wasn't totally happy with the same thing - but I like to explore and push things along as I try and find a certain visual resolution to my internal feelings.

I liked part of the process which created a sort of primal texture - what I did was underpin the image with a photograph of a large smoke house full of cocoa nut flesh that was being smoked - this is the very flesh that a cocoa nut crab eats - so I was exploring textures and layers and transparency - the image probably has about 15 layers. However all this does not negate your comment which is right on the money from where I sit.


Malk