Eugene Clark artist, exhibits 20 foot mural painting, "Transformation", in Art Prize 2023, DeVos Place, Grand Rapids, MI. Art Prize opens 9/14, and runs till 10/1.
This five panel pentaptych painting titled “Transformation”, is an allegory, highlighting the artist’s struggle with current events, including: the 2020 pandemic, 2021 Oxford High School shooting, 2022 Ukrainian war, relating these events to his childhood growing up in an inner city Detroit neighborhood, finding commonalities, strife, grief, violence, destruction, and the human condition. Clark paints the center panel of this artwork, to explore the power of transformation. As alchemists sought the conversion of base metals into gold and a universal cure for disease, Clark seeks, as in butoh-ka (butoh dancers) to attend to metamorphosis and healing through the body. The ancient Celtic stag symbol, is integrated, seen as protection when painted on a warriors chest before battle. The spiral symbol is the age-old intuitive symbol of spiritual development and our identity with the universe. Clark uses this as a way to connect all the panels.
