McMonster | Dead Labor

Title - Dead Labor
Media – Acrylic, water and pencil
Price/size - $400.00 , 11X14inches

Bio –
McMonster is a storyteller that uses symbols to create hidden narratives inside a
labyrinth of grey; Enchanting viewers to create their own story within each piece. While
ambiguously levitating somewhere in between horror and fantasy. Using only black
acrylic and water for the tones of grey and the deepest black. Bending light and
conjuring focus with bright opaque white acrylic ink and pencils, McMonster creates
worlds that are both intriguingly dreary and devastatingly whimsical.

Inspiration for the work –
For this piece I drew inspiration from a quote by Karl Marx
- “ Capital is dead labor, which vampire like, lives only by sucking living labor, and
lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
The castle is inspired by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob Van Ruisdael, and his
painting Bentheim Castle. I wanted the hierarchy to be represented by the castle high
on a hill looking down on the working class at the bottom, looming over them sucking
their labor from them.
The two women working in the valley below is inspired by the painting titled Gleaners,
by 18th century painter Jean-François Millet. In the original painting there are three of
them working, picking up scraps leftover by the farmers after they had harvested their
crops, but for this piece I have made the third Gleaner into a vampire, ready to feed on
her own kind.

A brief explanation?
The piece represents a disconnect in the parasitic symbiosis between the aristocracy
and the poor. Endless seduction with no reciprocation. What is above, feeds on what is
below, and eventually who is at the bottom will begin to feed on themselves, taking from
their bodies without ever giving anything back. We all either have been, or will be, at
some point, a vampire.