Where the Earth Meets the Sky

Inspired by both the religious painting traditions of Icons and the metaphor of the rose as "The Queen of Flowers", I wished to paint a figure who symbolically takes on the role as the epitome of divine beauty, compared with a rose, to showcase other forms of beauty aside from the traditional thin, Eurocentric standard commonly presented in the world today.

An Icon of Flowers

An allegorical piece on the dire situation of the climate crisis depicted through the environment, a figure of Mother Nature, and a swan. Acting as the literal idiom of a "swan song", giving one last call to action before its death, and the still, small hope of renewal presented though the hatchling next to the dying bird.

Swan Song

An allegorical painting made as a cautionary tale to critique the industry’s “blind eye” towards renowned artists whose accomplishments and practice was/is sustained by abuse and the disenfranchisement of others.
A grandiose setting and metaphorical elements from a classical understanding of art history are employed to bolster the seemingly untouchable and long rooted nature of this kind of exploitation, all to set the stage for an execution with Justice swinging down a sickle to strike the Arts in an act of retribution. A depiction of “May you reap what you sow.”

Justice Strikes the Arts, or The Death of a Sadist

Inspired by the journey of (possibly) Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvador Mundi becoming the highest sold painting in history, from its humble beginnings in obscurity before its attribution to Leonardo, to then being sold for almost half a billion dollars, then becoming devalued on The Prado’s assertion against Leonardo’s attribution, I wanted to attempt to create my own contemporary version to question the value of art on its own merit vs. it’s attribution to a particular artist- as a young, female, relatively new and unknown arts student rather than a figure like Da Vinci.

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Gabriela Lehmann Rodriguez

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