A Study in Red

The ‘Study in Red’ uses a highly painterly approach with the scenes beneath obscured and over-layed by vibrant red paint that is then scraped away to reveal the narrative below. The artist pulls the paint across the two-dimensional surface, creating bullet-wound holes in the canvas with a palette knife, leaving the tracks of their movements across the canvas surface. The result lends another dimension to the picture where the viewer can look through the gaps as portals into a different realm. This painting depicts the violence and bloodshed of the recent years in Mosul, but the blood-coloured red of the foreground can be scraped back to reveal the City underneath, damaged, tarnished, yet remaining.