"VANITAS (Vanity)" by Rob Moler (Original Painting)

Like a mirror held to one’s face, my male figurative work within “THE LATIN SERIES” reflects the struggle between human aspiration and the transitory nature of human existence. My themes include the sensuality of the flesh, the pain of broken relationships, the injustices of homophobia, the hypocrisy within the Christian tradition, and the shallow nature of the male psyche. Like the artisans of antiquity, I have chosen the autonomous male nude to express the collective human condition, an ideal image projected throughout the ages but never quite realized. It is within his “vulnerable virility” that we make our own cognitive connections with the inevitable process of aging, dying and death. I usually incorporate some sort of mask or substitute an object to cover the face of the subject to lift him onto a symbolically higher level of self-awareness and consciousness. By masking the figure, the internal male psyche rather than the individual physical portrait is emphasized which brings further content to the painting.

I am drawn to surrealism as it depicts a world where time is meaningless and gravity does not rule. In my surreal landscapes, objects are possessed by the spirits of positive and negative emotions or are carried by my little hummingbird messengers to add further depth to the story. Hopefully my work will connect emotionally with viewers, encouraging them to unmask these objects to discover their spiritual core and find personal meaning within.

“VANITAS” was created as another response to my observation of the male psyche which I personally discovered by “coming out” at the age of fifty. Exploring gay bars and apps was truly a shock to my system, reminding me of my own naïve perspective. This was a world dominated by the young, completely focused on the perfection of physical appearance. What was supposedly a “safe place” for me, I felt marginalized within my marginalized “tribe”. I quickly became the boring “wallpaper” in the room, ignored and unwanted.

I explored this concept of vanity through the symbolism of flowers (the morning glory and the tulip) as a fleeting temptation, flaunting its momentary allure through the physical senses. Shakespeare’s vanity symbol of the skull substitutes for the head of this disintegrating body while a Greek statue, symbolizing the Stoic mind of reason and detachment, is shadowed in the background. The question “to be or not to be?” had taken on a whole new meaning. Time, the enemy of youth, becomes a small focus within the composition; it can only be ignored for just so long.