A Skulltula Hangs From Its Web in the Dark — Print & Oil Painting

One thread, drawn as a hairline down the exact centre of the canvas, carries the whole weight of the picture. The creature hangs from it dead centre and perfectly frontal, and that symmetry is what makes the image so uncomfortable: it is posed like a specimen rather than caught like an animal.

The body is a human skull. Pale bone with green staining in the sutures, deep empty sockets, a broken nasal opening, an upper row of teeth still in place. Eight legs run off it in long jointed lengths, brown and knobbled like dead branches, each folding twice and finishing in a fine dark point.

Under the jaw sits the one saturated thing in the painting: a small cluster of red lights in a tight double row, the only part of the anatomy that is unmistakably alive.

The forest behind is fog and bare vertical trunks in grey-green, handled with photographic softness and almost no contrast, so the eye has nothing to hold on to except the skull. It reads instantly at any size. From our Zelda collection. The vine-covered forest temple takes the same dark woodland and treats it as an invitation instead.