The Tragedy of Macbeth

This is the fifth piece of the collection The Tragedy of Macbeth. The painting encloses the whole play, showcasing a collage-like storytelling artwork composed by the most iconic and meaningful elements of the previous pieces of the collection, carefully blended and reworked to function as a whole.

The piece depicts the arc of the main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, chronologically from left to right, emphasising their darkest behaviours motivated by greed; the beginning of a noble lord corrupted by a prophecy fulfilled with his wife and the unescapable consequences that followed.

Right in the middle of the composition lies the very end of the couple’s tyranny; Macduff’s righteous grip supported by the Birnam Wood forest. The sword that will defeat Macbeth as foreseen by the prophetic riddles spoken by The Witches, who conduct the orchestra since the very start of it all. So they do in the painting, right at the bottom.

Another link to The Witches are the ravens, which are blended through the shades located at Macbeth’s laryngeal prominence. Known better as the Adam’s apple, it’s a very masculine characteristic and that is exactly the key factor enabling his wife’s manipulation. She questioned his manhood because she knew there was a weak spot. The cartilage also wraps around the vocal cords and the presence of the ravens –The Witches- there suggest they shaped his voice... his actions.

As for all the pieces that are part of this collection, symmetry is ever-present; purity and temptation, determination and remorse, cause and consequence, what in shadows rises in light falls; a sense of balance across the whole collection.

Inspiration: William Shakespeare’s The Tragedie of Macbeth