Basement (the Cathedral)

Painting by the Cancer Diva

Essay by Vincent Blackwood

I keep coming back to this again and again. I love the dark, moody feel of it. It reminds me of a great black and white Gothic mystery film. And like any good mystery it feels tragic, lonely and hard to fully understand. To me it feels like a nightmare set in a deserted cathedral at midnight.

One of the conventions of old horror films is what is hidden in the catacombs or basement. Think of “Psycho”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Dracula”, “Metropolis” and dozens of others. Whenever someone goes down in the basement, they are making the journey into their own subconscious. Only having the guts to go through that door, can they finally do battle with the self-made monster that lurks down there. And if they just ignore it, as most of us do in our real lives, the monster just gets bigger and more dangerous. As Calderon wrote in "Life is a Dream"; "Many battles lie ahead, but the hardest awaits me now, mine own self."What I love even more than the mood of dread and loneliness, is what is in the basement. Those odd, undefinable figures entwined.

Depending on my mood I can see it as passion that is about to be discovered or a murder in progress. The woman at the top has been captured at a critical moment in her life, right before she sees the drama; a monster killing someone or lovers caught in the act? It is easy to confuse the two, particularly in the dark.