Judge, Jury, & Executioner (return of the puritans)

Description

Judge, Jury and executioner (return of the puritans). There’s a bit of social commentary going on here. It seems we have entered a new age of moral puritanism, an era of regressive all-encompassing political movements. If you don’t accept this new morality at face value without question then the new puritans will deem you as not acceptable in a civilised society. Intellectual discourse is sacrificed on the altar of empty values and fictitious moral purity. They don’t wear white wigs now, but the assumed moral superiority continues unabated.

I originally painted Judge, Jury and executioner sometime in 2022 without the newspaper collage. But it was bothering me, that little niggling feeling that it was missing something, so I decided to fill the empty space with letters cut from a newspaper. I had a lot of fun painting this, the character in the middle represents the judge (hence the curly wig), the character to the right is a member of the jury, whilst the character with the zig-zag mouth is the executioner.

The text says “The new puritans. Just like the idealogues and priests before they came, empty slogans, mindless slathering imbeciles, minds so open their brains have fallen out.”