Lady Macbeth

This is the second piece of the collection The Tragedy of Macbeth. The painting depicts the two phases of Lady Macbeth’s arc.

The piece chronically reads from left to right; from greed to remorse, the dark purple shadows of evil turning into unbearable psychosis filled with red. The fiery determination required to fulfill the grimmest deeds turned into guilt and pain; an unescapable madness.

The presence of a skull holds the unmistakable connotation of death. And the cranial sutures of the soft spot suggest a bigger lost: an unborn child, a death that might have taken away life’s purpose leaving nothing but a void that would later unleash the need to cling into the first great excuse to devote her whole self to; a desire to be unsexed in search for power.

On the left side the character shows as evil as determined, completely blinded by greed and the prophecies spoken by The Three Witches –represented by the six shady hands-. The shoulder up, the braided braid and the angular shapes across the shapes suggest self-confidence and ambition, signaling that she won’t stop no matter what.

On the right side Lady Macbeth has sank into despair. Contrasting the left side; the messed-up hair, the smeared makeup and the shoulder down imply self-unattendance and lack of will; eye wide open, guilty victim of psychotic torture: one pithing needle for each of the six innocent victims fallen to her greed.

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