Description
Hate – Love
By Marc Alexander from his ‘Touch’ exhibition. ‘Hate – Love’, Archival Paper Print, 300g Hahnemuhle Paper, 6cm by 8.5cm. Unframed.
Hate – Love
The Hate – Love tattoo has a number of cultural meanings or individual meanings to the wearer. There are several things to take into account – the first is that it fits the hands so they can be read easily (the thumb is often tucked away and so not easily as readable).
The most popular theme is one of religious or good and evil, Psalm 110:l: “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Love is usually tattooed on the right hand (the one that does God’s work) whilst hate is on the left as a reminder of the punishments or hatred of evil or sinners. This can also be read as the right hand does good works and the left hand does evil. It can also mean that you are in balance of the dual nature of humanity.
Like the Reverend Harry Powell, a fictional character in Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter, who was an itinerant preacher, con artist and serial killer with a switchblade and a puritanical hatred of women and sex. He had the words “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on his knuckles and would use them in a sermon about the internal struggle between good and evil. He would spread the gospel until money ran thin, at which point he would gain the trust of wealthy widows, marry them and kill them for their money. He would then run off (often in a stolen car) and repeat the process. He never thought God would forsake him for his crimes; after all, he was doing God’s work and “God’s book was full of killin’s”, as he put it.”
The person in my drawing has placed the ‘Hate’ on the right side and ‘Love’ on the left.
Touch Series
After a long season of producing portraits in oils, I returned for a while to the humble pencil. The ‘Touch’ exhibition, which opened at the Studio Gallery Kalk Bay on Friday June 14th 2013 and ran until July 3rd, was the result of that experience – a true celebration of the beauty and expressiveness of the human hand.
Several months before this show, a group of us artists got together in the studio to work on life drawings, and for me, hands are one of the most difficult parts of the human body to draw, so I decided to master this challenge by producing one hundred detailed drawings. Friends, family and even casual acquaintances, modeled their hands for me and in each drawing I tried to capture the unique character of each individual.
A great deal could be learned about a person just by observing their hands. For example, the slight hand gestures of a person in love, or the anxious mannerisms of the addicted smoker clutching his last cigarette, or the telltale scars and callouses which belong to a hard working laborer. The hands are young and old, lined and smooth and endlessly expressive and tell a hundred stories which are all captured in my hyper-realistic style.
Archival Prints
Many of Marc’s artworks are available as fine art digital prints. Professionally photographed and printed on large format inkjet printers, these prints are limited edition numbered bottom left and signed bottom right. The paper used is 320g Hahnemuhle archival watercolour paper. The process employs fade resistant, archival inks, which boast a 100+ year fade-proof guarantee. The paper prints are sold plastic wrapped on an acid-free foamcore backing board. These prints are also available in varying sizes of canvas.
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