Eve of Destruction 2021

Rose Freymuth-Frazier made this striking oil painting, Eve of Destruction, with a controlled palette that oozes a kind of classical realism gone rogue. It’s like she’s taken the smooth surfaces of old master paintings and given them a contemporary, edgy twist. Look at the way the paint is layered; it’s built up meticulously, creating this incredible depth, yet there's a flatness to the figure that almost feels like a contemporary graphic. The peeling apple, with its bright, almost cartoonish red, offers this brilliant pop against the more subdued tones of the figure and the snake. It's like a concentrated explosion of colour. The snake's coiled body, draped so casually, really speaks to the artist's capacity to play with symbolism, and the way she’s rendered the skin is so delicate and yet so present, a real material fact. Freymuth-Frazier reminds me of artists like Lisa Yuskavage, who also plays with traditional painting techniques but pushes them into overtly sexualised, confrontational spaces. What I love most is how neither artist is afraid to embrace ambiguity, leaving you with more questions than answers.