Now to go back to a very old piece indeed, this conceptual still life from 2006 or so! My only goal here was to do my own version of the kinds of medieval and renaissance still-life paintings I remember seeing where various objects like books, globes or dead fish would be interspersed with a human skull as a reminder of mortality. If memory serves these were called “memento mori.” But it’s been awhile since I was in school, admittedly.

I was also interested in what was described to me as the “archaic smile” that was normally found on ancient Greek sculptures of girls and boys (Kore and Koros, I think). These beautiful young people wore enigmatic smiles as free-standing sculptures or pillars, supposedly because it made their faces look like they wore the proper serene expression when being viewed from below. I’m wracking my memory here, but I believe that’s what I was thinking when including the bust of the young man.

Memento Mori is on Society6||Redbubble. Among other things I made some depressing stationary you can use to remind people of mortality.