posted on May, 8 2003 @ 01:19 PM
I just looked at it, i will jhave to admit, I hadnt read the story behind it before looking at it, I simply wanted to see the haunted painting. I will
admit, it gave me chills up and down my spine. I still have goosebumps from it. Looking at it tho, its not some mysterious force,. tho, but i think
the nature of the painting, the subject, and all. the expression and emotion in the painting is very creepy. Something in the cold, almost undead
starkness of the boy, and the gutted out empty doll give me the creeps. the lighting, is like not natural or surreal lighting (not the red flashlight
shined on the painting, the actual light setting of the art.) Its like, some creepy place in the world of the living where the middle ground between
life and death have merged. Yeah, its creepy, but the story just makes it funny. People claiming they had to cleanse thier houses after viewing it.
All that.....sigh....
Its simply the painting itself, the way its set up. its like time, death, life, something that just doesnt belong....it looks very 1930's but was
painted in the 1970's.that could explain my unconcious reaction.
I asked my mom to look at it, telling her nothing about the painting. She looked at it, and she said, it looked very sad, but she liked it. She said
it just looked lonely somehow. She didnt get the jitters, because to her, it simply looked like a sad lonely boy, and that she would hang it on a
wall. My conclusion is that the artist, when making this painting, as he said, bridging the world between subconciousness, collective conciousness,
and other mental mysteries, tapped into something deep down with in the collective, or his own piece of it, and it was something creepy and disturbing
to most people, and it simply takes form, from the realm of his inner mind into the physical in the form of an image. The variety of emotions or
things he deleved within.
Both my mothers reaction and mind point not to haunting or evil forces and spirits, but to a non physical subtle force: the power of art to evoke
emotions and images deep from within the soul, which differ from person to person. Theres no evil spirits behind this, its simply, perhaps, as the
artist intended, something in the collective unconciousness we all share, but view differently.