Will Hanekom, Jack of Spades

When I first came up with this idea for a piece. I think one subject I’m just very interested in is the subject of, well, in terms of folklore, just creatures or people that could transform into another thing. Because it’s basically that crossing over into different worlds has, particularly seen to be in a lot of cultures, like the sowers of Discord. When I saw that there was a Ditchling, Witch Hare I was like, yes, this is a this is a subject I really want to cover because I think there is so much interesting things. You could almost evoke with that sort of idea. I have done papier maché before, but I never really stuck it on to a painting before. But this is exactly the reason I wanted to do it, because I thought with this specific idea that you have this almost vignette, this mural of these different things going on, and you have the titular Witch Hare herself, staring at the audience with their face, face pressing out. I think it just it’s almost a bit confronting. It sort of addresses the audience to sort of look at what is happening here and to decide for themselves. And you have these little vignettes of these set pieces, like The Dog and of course, the, the cow is just kind of completely innocent in all of this. It’s like, ‘what on earth happened?’ I originally had a sort of a draft, of this behind, but I wasn’t liking it, so I painted over again with a bit of dark, but I left sort of the layer, a thin layer, a bit slightly visible, so that those who, would come to see at least the finished image would see the process as it was made. Plus, I think it gives it sort of a bit of a ghostly quality. I kind of felt like it needed a little bit more chaos to it. So, that’s when I just went full on Jackson Pollock. Like, I just kind of. I just decided to start splattering, and I think it filled up a bit of extra space. But I’m very obsessed with colors in, like, dark spaces, and they just attractive to me. And I. And I hope this becomes attractive to people as well, too. Or disgusting, I don’t know.