Arachne 1991

Boris Vallejo created this painting, Arachne, with what looks like oil paint and a fine brush, though the date is unknown. The subject is a woman with a web around her. And while I don’t usually go in for figurative painting this piece has a wonderful sense of the process. The paint is handled in such a way that the skin is very smooth, so smooth it looks artificial, and it has the kind of heightened colour that seems to be lit from within. Meanwhile, the spider’s web is very precisely, almost mechanically rendered. The colours are deep, almost gothic, which gives the painting a strange feeling that oscillates between dream and nightmare. Look, for instance, at the way Vallejo renders the fingers and nails of the larger woman. It's a small area but the rendering is so precise it’s almost painful. I’m reminded of Olivia De Berardinis’ pin-up paintings. This kind of very polished work has an interesting tension between fantasy and the tactile real.