Sax Berlin Motherhood: Contemporary Surrealist Oil Painting by Sax Berlin 2012

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Motherhood is a self portrait of Sax Berlin’s experience as a single father. He had to be mother and father … Read more Motherhood is a self portrait of Sax Berlin’s experience as a single father. He had to be mother and father at a time when he was aggrieved after his beautiful wife Susan’s passing when no amount of nourishment could fill the need.

Symbolised as breasts and pacifiers that the hands cannot grasp. Creating the Surrealist style was the only way to portray this amount of anguish. The child’s anguish being expressed by the tongue wrapped around the head and the tonsils exposed. The mother’s anguish augmented with a cross section of the face and the large wailing tongue going back into the structure of the head. The red undergarment depicting the flaming furnace of emotion beneath the cool of her dress. The design came from my experiments with automatic drawing, the means of accessing the subconscious directly. This piece is a portal of fascination.

In contrast, closer inspection will reveal the use of the delicate and many layered Medieval technique of cracked tempera which is a discipline Sax has adapted and evolved to suit his expression for over a decade. It is a technique that will delight connoisseurs. All the colours are hand made from original earth and mineral pigments. See less