"Phantasma Phantasia: Milites Diaboli - [the soldiers of the Devil] Triptych” 2016 paint and marker on
paper mounted on illustration board. collection of Stephen Romano

The title of the triptych tips its hat to the great Russian icon painting “Ecclesia militans” which commemorates the conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible 1552.

A stylistic outgrowth of my automatic drawing process with the introduction of the vibrant translucent colours of HI-LITER pens. As if to re-enforce the link between text and image, automatic writing and drawing of Spiritualism and the Surrealists. Serving very much the same function of the pens, to make the text stand out without obscuring it.

Emergent figurations and filigraic flourishes have congealed to become a variety of different repetitive motifs that make up compositional palette of this Neo-Rococo work. A field of fleeting fanciful figures that frolic frivolously in endless exuberant ornamental elaborations gleefully extol the Body Grotesque. Executed with common place materials and mediocre medium, that serve to illuminate the
marvelous miasmic mirage of mind manifesting.