Len Shires

I’m Len Shires. I draw and paint things I like to look at. I’m attracted to the tension between the heroic and the grotesque. The heroic in this context is the comforting narrative of triumph. The grotesque is the collapse of that narrative under pressure. The transformation results from  honesty taken to an extreme where the subject becomes distorted. The horror is that the distortion is the more accurate reflection of the subject.

 

The figure is the best vessel for the trope. Human, plant or animal, we recognize them and derive safety from the familiarity. The disturbance emerges from a wrong detail, and is often considerably more durable than overt horror. Where the traditionally scary can and does leave an impression, it is still one we know and therefore can overcome. But the weird, indecipherable wrongness of a thing can unmake our fundamental understanding of the world and erect something terrible in its place.

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My work operates in the continuum between the subtle exposure of the seams to the breaking point where the disturbance is total and sustained.