Acrylic, tempera, gravel, plastic, and ink on canvas

2019

The title “Fraught Midpoints” is an anagram for Four Past Midnight which is the title of a 1990 novella by Stephen King. One of the stories within the novella is titled The Langoliers and features strange, supernatural beings that attempt to devour a group of airline passengers who are stranded in another dimension. A film adaptation of the story was released in 1995. The spiky shapes and jagged rows of stones in my painting are a reference to these creatures that look vaguely like Pac-Man with chainsaws for teeth.

The splotches of dark pigment represent the “nothingness” the Langoliers leave behind after they devour something. The red “blood drips” are a reference to the frightful and voracious nature of the Langoliers, even though living beings that are devoured are essentially erased rather than physically consumed. I included the plastic googly eyes to help people understand that the spiky shapes are some kind of creature, in case they don’t know what a Langolier is.

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