Painter and Loid Struggle for Soul Control

Trenton Doyle Hancock is a storyteller. His practice, from painting to performance, is built on a wild and elaborate mythology that unfurls with each new work he produces. This allegorical assemblage introduces viewers to Painter and Loid, superheroes who battle for the departing soul of the recently deceased Legend, the striped, mound-shaped character in the lower right of the work. Painter is represented by strokes of hot, bright color, and Loid by the black-and-white text branches that twist and turn throughout this work. In Hancock’s ever-growing narrative, Legend is the first of the Mounds, a species of striped half-human, half-plant mutants under siege by another group called the Vegans. Painter and Loid are in a heated battle at a turning point in Hancock’s story. His prolific body of work is the result of an encyclopedic knowledge of high and low art forms and a fertile imagination.