Rife With Symbology!

                             CRIS SHAW   

Madonna of the Particle 

by

 Chris Shaw, 2013

I’m not sure exactly where my fas­ci­na­tion with Madon­nas was born, but I’ve loved Icons of all kinds for a very long time.

As an artist I’m intrigued with the the way icons present their ideas – an eas­ily under­stood, blunt cen­tral image jux­ta­posed with deep sym­bol­ism and cryp­tic geo­met­ric foun­da­tions. Icons also have a rea­son for exist­ing, they are con­vey­ers of information.

The mod­ern icons I cre­ate also con­vey infor­ma­tion, it could be a sci­en­tific con­cept, a polit­i­cal state­ment, or a pop-culture ref­er­ence. Regard­less, each icon has a story and a rea­son for existing.

In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehi­cle to lit­er­ally carry the ideas I’ve cho­sen to por­tray. The titles are straight for­ward. How­ever, under­ly­ing and obfus­cated by the image is a rigid geo­met­ric base, over which the Madonna icon is con­structed. The geom­e­try within this base is a rid­dle to deci­pher as are many of the sym­bols within.  . . .

The “Madonna of the Par­ti­cle” and the “Madonna of Dark Mat­ter” both con­cern the recently dis­cov­ered Higgs-Boson par­ti­cle. The geo­met­ric base used within each image con­tains nat­ural ratios and curves that ref­er­ence the sub-atomic par­ti­cle col­li­sions which led to the “God Particle’s” discovery.  . . .

Each paint­ing com­mu­ni­cates its secrets in var­i­ous ways.

 

Madonna of the Dark Matter

by

 Chris Shaw, 2013