Painting the Forest of the Happy Ever After
On view through June 16, 2024
Brattleboro Museum & Art Center
Brattleboro, Vermont
www.Brattleboromuseum.org
John Newsom makes use of metaphor and symbolism in “Painting the Forest of the Happy Ever After,” a series of paintings created as the artwork for “Forest of the Happy Ever After,” a 2023 album by Wu-Tang Clan affiliated rapper Killah Priest.
Newsom’s work depicts a teeming natural world, with plants and animals representing the renewal that occurs every spring. A portrait of Killah Priest, which appears on the album’s cover, shows the musician surrounded by flora and fauna, like a natural deity or shaman existing in both an imaginary realm and the physical world, capable of absorbing death and supplementing it with rebirth.
In connection with Newsom’s exhibit, Killah Priest will perform at Brattleboro’s Stone Church on Tuesday, June 4, and will join Newsom for a meet-and-greet at BMAC the night before.
See more here: https://www.brattleboromuseum.org/…/john-newsom-forest…/
[Image: John Newsom, “Forest of the Happy Ever After” (2022). Oil on wood, 40 x 40 inches.]
