The concept of this painting came from a 1200-year-old prayer which suggests who will live and who will die, and those that die before their time succumb to a litany of possible deaths. The prayer ultimately suggests that repentance, prayer, and charity will temper the severe decree. The prayer started to resonate with the artist when he faced his own mortality and thought, Who by Fire, Who by Water, and Who by Thoracic Aneurism.
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1965 Ohio State Buckeyes
This painting was inspired by an Ohio State University yearbook. The twenty-two-year-old graduates, including the artist with their flat tops, bouffants, and flips, were optimistically ready to leave their student realm and enter the real world to make their mark. These graduates are now parents, and their own children are optimistically facing life as the graduates once had done. How quickly time passes and how speedily lost is our youthful idealism.
The Breakup of the USSR
All the signs were glaringly obvious, so Fenton, “of the duck and cover generation,” made this prediction painting that the USSR was going to break up. He used a blown-up Soviet tank as a visual metaphor for the giant’s collapse.