“the story of the hungry ants!”

the story is that there is this ravenous ant colony that drifts through the universe and commandeers the corpses of fallen deities and other beasts and uses the commandeered corpse to go hunting. i was inspired by the story of the silver surfer, who is forced to lead this giant lovecraftian homunculus around to eat planets so that the homunculus doesn't eat his own planet. the ant colony operates in a similar way but it's sort of a benign version of the silver surfer homunculus. the ants feed on parasites and cancers; they seek out dying planets and consume whatever it is that's ailing the planet. it's not done out of any good will really, it's just what the ants happen to eat. they are kind of like intergalactic white blood cells.

in this version of the ant colony's story, the ants have found a suitable homunculus and have descended upon planet earth and they are now hungrily devouring a random assortment of wealthy oligarchs. i started painting right around the time that luigi mangione (allegedly) popped that healthcare ceo and i was like "fuck yeah what if there was a biological entity that could come do that for us," so i depicted the ants coming to earth and plucking up all the oligarchs and impaling them on spears to bring back to the anthill and eat later. it is a very violent and on-the-nose wish fulfillment painting that was very cathartic to make. i am hoping that the act of painting this acts as a summoning ritual and that the hungry ants are actually able to drag one of their hijacked corpses over to our side of the universe and start eating before these people make earth uninhabitable.

this painting is part of a broader trend in my work where i depict violent class struggles through the lens of fantastical biological processes. i have another work i was debating submitting where a bunch of microbes who live on a ruined mountain rise up and kill their managerial class and try to rebuild the mountain (they ripped a bunch of holes through the side and the entire thing collapsed) but i chose this one because it's a bit more recent, and also easier to capture in one photo. i guess i prefer to see the breakdown of our current global order as a biological inevitability, regardless of what comes next. when a planet's systems become too decadent and untenable, the ants smell blood and eat out all the rot, and then we can sift through the pulp and start over (?)

there are a few other predator/prey dynamics going on throughout the piece; a mantis chasing cockroaches, a tarantula hawk eyeing a brazilian wandering spider from across the expanse, and a bunch of snakes who came over to eat the ants (i like when the predators become prey too it balances things out).

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