Agony in the Garden Painting

Miriam Cabello is a Chilean-Australian interdisciplinary artist, curator, and academic educator, based in Sydney. Her studio practice explores Mythology, questioning, "Where is Hercules (Heracles)? What does it mean to be Hercules in the 21st century?" She offers a host of unique artistic responses to this ambitious question. Her new multi-layered works feature some of the finest figurative contemporary paintings of universal heroes, from the celebrated to the conspicuous, from athletes to activists. To reveal and merge incompatible ideas from masculinity and feminism in contemporary art. Western Mythology juxtaposed with Meso-American myths. Allegories of Pugilism (boxing) aim to expound ideas and unearth the exploits of great heroes fighting against superhuman odds, quests and trials and the eternal fight against the powers of darkness and adversity. Hercules finds its origins in Cabello's 2011 exhibition at the DUMBO Arts Festival, Brooklyn, selected to travel to the National Art Museum of Sport, USA, titled 'Australian Aboriginal Boxing Legends'. Highlighting Lionel Rose, American Sports Illustrated wrote of his 1968 fight in Tokyo, "across Australia, that night people clung to radios as if the ringside announcer were Winston Churchill … women wept over Lionel Rose and men shouted…. Lionel Rose was Hercules, Charles Lindbergh and the Messiah all rolled into one". Miriam's creative process and the interlocking themes she has developed throughout her life and art practice are grounded on the Old Masters' historical oil painting techniques, iconography, colour symbolism and the Latin American art canon. Her innovative oil painting technique bridges the baroque and post-modern understanding of light, which affects perception. She founded ©Spectral Kinetic Realism after 20 years of academic research and creative exploration.