Dreamt of in childhood: a golden sun with an unhappy face at its centre — part Louis XIV, part private myth. First seen at the age of eight and never forgotten, this image followed the artist across decades and through multiple incarnations. Wrestling with Angels is its final, most distilled form.
At the centre is a solitary figure, drawn from a model made in 2000 — a childlike face, lost, expressionless, surrounded by painted rays of gold. But the gold deceives. Its gleam falters. The illusion of light, of volume, breaks down under close scrutiny. The figure offers no comfort. It does not notice. It does not console.
Surrounding the image is a heavy grey frame — a deliberate reference to the temples we build around ourselves, inwardly and emotionally. Structures of meaning. Of memory. Of self-preservation. Yet within it, the centre holds only uncertainty.
The title draws from the biblical story of Jacob, and echoes the disillusionment found in Auden’s Shield of Achilles — not a shield of glory, but of grief. Not an angel of hope, but of confrontation. There is no triumph here, only endurance.
Wrestling with Angels is more than a return to a childhood vision — it’s a meditation on how the symbols we carry can outlive their clarity, but not their power. We inherit them too early to understand, and spend our lives contending with what they mean. This painting doesn’t resolve that struggle. It holds it — quietly, and without consolation — as something shared. A private myth, made public. A single image, enduring where certainty cannot.
Exhibited:
Mark Alexander Wrestling with Angels, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin 2016
Royal Academy Summer Show 2018
