Last Gangster. Acrylic pop art painting
A man stumbles forward, head down, apparently in the instant of being shot. His hands clench in pain and he makes no move to break his fall.
One foot remains in a representation of the “real world”, while he passes into the Unknown as a lattice of coloured squares.
pale blue auras
A pale blue aura is present only on the side of his body still in the real world, marking the moment of death and his passage into a personal vision of hell or a perverse redemption.
Behind him in the real world there is a vividly coloured wall, and beyond it a stylised forest and blue sky, suggesting a peace that remains unattainable.
*Artist Doug Kemp with the last gangster Painting
Filling the dead gangster’s role
Another man stumbles forward from the right, but he is without the aura and without clenched fists and therefore possibly still alive, perhaps about to fill the dead gangster’s role.
Doug has turned this transition into ritual: a cycle of fall and succession. Last Gangster becomes both elegy and commentary, reflecting on violence, identity and myth.
