Red Couple 2008

Although I don't usually feel that my images are political, I came across "Red Couple" recently.  Done in 2008, the skirt of the woman and the torso of the man are from a photograph of  Lee Harvey Oswald  holding a rifle The woman's torso is made from a design of different kinds of skeletons of humans and animals(just in case you missed the death reference with the rifle images).  Looking back, 2008 almost seems to have been a time of innocence.  It was pre Trump, pre COVID, pre the war between the Ukraine and Russia, climate change wasn't as dire, and now, most horrifically, the conflict between Israel and Hamas(although I'm sure there was violence in 2008 as well).  I almost never use red in my work, or red like this, a red that dominates the painting, but in this case, it's a clear reference to blood.  This morning, someone posted on my Facebook feed the image of five dead children from the Israel/Hamas conflict whose bodies had been laid out on a table.  It was too awful for words.