Life is only a theatre of pain, and we’re all puppets. - Samo Shalaby

​This piece is titled “Figurative Theatre”. The title was inspired by Christian Death’s “Only Theatre of pain” album. This artwork acts as a window into my world, filled with souls and characters scattered across the stage and sky representing multifaceted aspects of me and my life. With characters disguised by glamorous excess, the presence of lush acts as a veil between the truth of my world and the beautiful lies that embellish its facade. If you’d usually ask me why or what these all mean, I wouldn’t know how to answer. What I am communicating is parts of myself through riddles and beautiful metaphors for an audience to decipher and find themselves within that. I primarily wanted to create this piece through myself for myself as a therapy. Channelling all my demons into angels. Every saint as a past, every sinner has a future. The painting moves from light to dark energy from left to right of the painting. This is represented through the dwelling characters that lament at the gates of my mind, each with their own story to tell, and each looking at you. I see this painting as a still movie, a fantasy, a metaphor to translate the harsh realities of life, pain disguised by beauty and the facades we all wear. Oscar Wilde once said “give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth”. This artwork takes my mask off. This painting is almost a self portrait(s), I am telling my story with very few words, as I communicate better with paint. I am not explaining myself to the audience, rather I'm showing all the different sides of me through it. I want to know what it means to them, if hope the audience can find themselves within it, comfort or discomfort. I want people to feel something. This was my emotional funeral and reawakening at the same time. It’s just the beginning of my series of stage paintings.
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Main Stage: From light (left) to dark (right) energy showcases characters which represent facets of my personality

Top Left: My interpretation of paradise. With the angel of wounded pride, shot by cupid in frame. Painted in acrylic over gold leaf

Top Right: My interpretation of hell. With the devil and his apple and snake cane.

Middle Left: ‘Hells Angels’ panel. It shows a portal of light which enters into the eher, which angels floating into it. There is a nymph swinging across a devil’s chandler into the main stage; this was to show the devil (or evil) can be anywhere. The angels look at you in menacing expressions, fearing the light in front of them and where it could lead to.

Middle right: ‘The Night of a Thousand Spirits’ panel. It shows a deceasing flow of spirits or souls trapped in a dark sea of hauntingly candlelit figures. They are glazed in sheer shades of blue to show how they are transparent, barely there.

Bottom Middle: The Pool Party scene. With sea life and creatures ‘sedusa’ and ‘octopussy’ having drinks and a smoke amidst the chaotic candlelight. All acrylic over silver leaf

Bottom Corner (left): The Hydrangea Crypt. Representing ignorance is bliss. Zombified in a glowing glass coffin amongst a sea of hydrangeas hanging in the candlelights. 

Bottom Corner (Right): The Undead crypt. For the Unholy Saint. For those who’ve come out of their coffins and are their own worst enemies. A part of their soul dies, they’re trapped in the mirror

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