-Mixed media: Acrylic, linen, graphite, gunpowder and blood on canvas-
40”x40”

This is an original work created to benefit the artist’s friend Ellen who battles stage four breast cancer. All proceeds from its sale will go to allay her medical costs.

To bid on this work please do so HERE

ABOUT THE WORK

“A palimpsest is work that fades to make room for something new - Stories pass into memory to offer space for fresh adventures. Fire consumes so that beauty springs forth from ashes… and health vanquishes disease in a forced erasure to give way for renewed life. In Kevin Rolly’s work “MAGNITUDES (FORELLEN)” the artist draws powerfully upon all three themes: Hope, memory and fire.

Created with multiple layers of various gunpowders, each having their own unique qualities, they were ignited on the canvas itself in numerous stages in a process that can only be guided by the artist but never controlled. Gunpowder as a medium speaks with its own voice always and leaves its traces where it alone chooses. The process then shifted to one of contrasting delicateness. Prose nearly obfuscated by paint, is rendered barely discernable throughout the work and requiring its audience into an intimate physical closeness in which to discern the words themselves. And what can be perceived from the fragmentation of the text is a dream-like narrative that evokes a journey - a community and a history of which his friend has been inextricably a part of for many years. In doing so, the work evokes our own universal longing to be part of larger narrative that we write with our lives, or hope to.

The result is a counterpoint in extremes, bother visually and poetically, yet ones intrinsically bound: The emotional and physical intensity of the fight against an unjust disease and the unyielding love of friends surrounding and supporting her. Yet the work speaks independently as a visual metaphor regardless of the knowledge of its origins.

MAGNITUES is Rolly’s largest gunpowder work to date and by far the most complex and evolved.”

-Aaron Moore