Marilyn Fenn Paintings

What Have We Become?

Digitally Manipulated Photos with Encaustic Printed Mixed Media of What Have We Become?“What Have We Become?”

Digitally Manipulated Photos with Encaustic, Printed on Fine Art Paper, Mounted on Masonite Panels, connected with chain links

Each panel: 9″ x 12″
Outside Dimensions: 34″ x 37″ x 1″ deep

© Marilyn Fenn

This 9-panel piece explores imagery which, through its imprint on us by the mass media, achieves a certain iconic power in its capacity to evoke dread, as well as doubt about the human condition — images of how we as human beings still treat other human beings.

These were inspired (if one can use that word in this context) by the horrific images from Abu Graib. After realizing that some of the Abu Graib images were recognizable in an instant, even if only in silhouette, I began searching for other images that carried with them such power of recognition — images with a similar theme. They weren’t hard to find.

To counter the horror in the majority of these iconic images, three of these images provide a ray of hope in a tic-tac-toe win pattern (3, 5, and 7).

List of images: right to left, top to bottom:

  1. Falling man, 9-11
  2. Kent State National Guard murder of student
  3. 1960’s Anti-war rally – peacenik inserting flower in rifle
  4. Viet Nam napalmed girl
  5. The Earth from space
  6. Abu Graib torture victim
  7. Tiananmen Square man confronting tank
  8. Viet Nam Execution
  9. Hurricane Katrina girls on roof
 
The process I am using here entails digitally altering photographic images, which are then printed on fine art paper, mounted on board, and painted with encaustic.
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