Backdrop for a picnic in the Mouth of Hell

 Backdrop for a picnic in the Mouth of Hell, 2025.
Silkscreen on canvas, 9 × 12 ft

This work draws inspiration from the Renaissance Garden at Bomarzo, Italy, where volcanic stone has been carved into a landscape full of mythic beings, monstrous faces, and grotesque figures.

My backdrop takes its form from the garden’s most infamous sculpture, the “Mouth of Hell”: a gaping face that is at once comedic and terrifying. Theatrical in presence, its open mouth reveals a hidden chamber with a stone table inside, large enough for four people to sit and dine together in this infernal setting.

I translate that grotesque stage into a silkscreened canvas backdrop, part of a developing series of props and scenic fragments conceived as a set for a film not yet defined.