Art of the apocalypse

Dangerous Minds recently featured a series of unsettling paintings.

My kind of art.

They are the work of artist Fred Enauldi. The article accompanying the gallery indicates that Enauldi bucked the system in more than a few ways. First, a career aptitude test (you know those sorts of scantron things) told him he would best be suited as a bus driver. Fortunately, he stuck with something he loved: art. Yet at the same time, he loved drawing monsters, something generally eschewed and frowned upon in "fine art," much the same as genre fiction is deflected in university writing programs. Nevertheless, you can still see the "monster" influence within his work.

For as he says, Enauldi paints "pictures out there that don't exist and which you have a need to see." These pictures are rendered in a unique style that seems to combine an almost Rembrandt-ish Baroque quality with a pop comic book appeal. There is even a bit of Norman Rockwell thrown in for good measure. I find this to be especially evident in the piece pictured above titled, "Patriot." Yeah, you gotta love the cutting criticism.

Why do I say criticism? Well, if you look at the gallery in all of its somber tones and often NSFW depictions, Enauldi has a prescient sense of where this world is probably heading. It's reminiscent of the work of Alexis Rockman, whom I've also featured on ESE. I'm thinking of "Paradise Now" specifically.

I guess I'm just glad not to be the only cynic out there, alone on an island and nursing a blandishment allergy. Depressing? Yes. It is. It should be. It should make you think. It should make you consider where the world is going.

Do you like it? If not, how will you change it?


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