The multimedia work of New York based artist Craig LaRotonda depicts a world infused with macabre imagery and surreal characters, featured here on our blog. Though his work is highly stylized, featuring modern cyborgs and other iconoclastic creatures drawn in the iconic style of Renaissance and Byzantine Art, the artist pulls his inspiration from somewhere familiar to him. Often, his ideas come from his own psyche and our human existence, such as birth, growth, emotions, conflict, and mortality.
“In The Shadow of Silent Kings” is the title LaRotonda’s latest series of acrylic on panel paintings, debuting at the Night Gallery Fine Art in Santa Ana, CA. Some of these paintings make icons of what would otherwise be considered “undesirable” characters who have faced adversity; for instance, sideshow performer Schlitzie, famous for his appearance in 1932 film Freaks, appears in LaRotonda’s version of the Madonna and Child in “One of Us”, while a limb-less child is presented as a holy oracle in “Oraculum”.
In an email to Hi-Fructose, LaRotonda shared: “In The Shadows of Silent Kings explores the collective experience of my cast of characters in a surreal play about the human condition. The flawed but alluring subjects depicted are searching for a way to survive in this strange world each on their own path to redemption.” Adding, “These distorted creatures are captured in a timeless space- surviving the brutality and beauty of existence.” “In The Shadow of Silent Kings” opens on June 4th.
It has been said that the Renaissance witnessed the rediscovery of the individual and is considered the first great age of portraiture. Inspired by master artists like Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Holbein, Moscow based photographer 
New York based artist 