Artist Analysis

The artist of this picture is Max Palenko and he didn’t say what the title was. This piece looks like stone totem poles that are coming from the center of the earth and stretch all the way up to the surface to form a kind of “tunnel back to the center.” These “totem poles” also look like cliffs and there is fog pouring over the edges of them. There are also some creepy faces in each column.

The artist used line and value to create depth. He used textures to make the columns look like rocks and the fog look like, well, fog. He also used sense of scale and color to create an even more established sense of depth. All of these elements helped to create a kind of dark mood one of sadness, anger and terror. The faces that he “carved” into the stone add to that by being faces of anguish.

I’m not really sure what the artist’s intensions behind his work were. He might have been meaning for it to represent the anguished souls of the dead or it could be a gateway to Hell or something like that though I’m really not entirely sure.

I like this piece because at first glance it could be just some oddly shaped cliffs but then you look closer and you can start to see shapes and faces and it starts to make your mind wonder what the meaning of it really is. So I think this piece really reflects what I’m trying to do because upon first glance I want people to see the fairy tale they all grew up with but then when they look closer I want them to see how I’ve kind of twisted the story.