Large statement still life (vanitas) featuring a waratah, classical bust and symbolic objects — painted in bold cobalt blues and deep reds on a warm neutral ground.
Acrylic on deep-edge canvas, ready to hang, signed and supplied with a certificate of authenticity.
Size: 152 Ă— 122 cm. Unframed (deep edge suits hanging unframed or framing to taste).
Beginning of The End is a large-scale, metaphorical vanitas still life responding to the war between two neighboring countries and the way conflict invades ordinary life while the full truth remains controlled.
At the centre, the red waratah carries a double message. It can be read as a future celebration of peace—a bloom that insists on life continuing—but also as hearts torn open by conflict, bleeding with grief. The petals become wounds; the colour becomes pain.
Partly concealed behind the foliage, a skull sits like a shadow in the room: an unambiguous reminder that death is always present in war, even when it is pushed to the background of public conversation. Nearby, a female candle holder (a small standing figure) becomes a quiet monument to those left behind—mothers, wives, sisters—whose loss doesn’t end when the headlines move on.
On the right, the cold, marble-like head of the commander Gattamelata rests on a book with golden-edged pages. This pairing suggests the weight of authority over knowledge: how history is polished, edited, and presented; how inconvenient truths can be buried under power, status, and official narratives. Yet the painting holds space for resistance: two clay whistles sit as symbols of brave individuals who speak out, raising an alarm and refusing silence even when the cost is high.
Smaller objects add quieter layers. A sea shell (a portable “home”) speaks of displacement, exile, and the distant sound of belonging—the way people carry the memory of home when home is unsafe or unreachable. Tiny glass marbles catch the light like fragile planets: they can be read as childhood and innocence interrupted, but also as hope and chance—small, easily lost things that still shine.
Painted in professional acrylic with a modern impressionist sensibility, this work balances lush colour and symbolism—beauty and brutality sharing the same table—because that is what war does: it changes the meaning of everything.