Marcolina's
Four Eyes | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting
Four Eyes | John Gurbacs | Original Oil Painting
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Payment plans available · Ships worldwide · Certificate of Authenticity included · Contact us to discuss options
Original oil painting by John Gurbacs · Available at Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide
Four wolf faces surround a figure shown from behind, dressed in red, hands caught mid-motion adjusting the waistband. Each wolf occupies its own corner of the canvas, eyes and muzzles pressing in from every side, close enough that none of them can be mistaken for background.
Red clothing, wolves, a figure who can't see what's watching her, the reference sits close enough to Little Red Riding Hood that it doesn't need spelling out. But the painting never actually says who the menace is. The fairy tale assumes the wolves are the danger and the girl in red is the target, that's the reading everyone brings in automatically. Nothing in the composition confirms it. The wolves could just as easily be watching, not hunting, and the figure in red, the one thing actually moving in the scene, hands active, in control, could be the one the painting is actually warning you about.
| Artist | John Gurbacs |
| Medium | Oil on Canvas, Thin Wooden Frame |
| Dimensions | 20 1/2 x 24 1/2 in |
| Certificate | Certificate of Authenticity included |
| Shipping | Ships worldwide with full insurance |
| Payment | Payment plans available |
Collector's Note
The most narrative piece in this group, leaning on a story everyone already knows to do quiet, unsettling work without needing to explain itself.
Acquisition
Available through Marcolina's Fine Arts Gallery with worldwide shipping, full insurance, and professional art packaging. Payment plans available. Private viewings by appointment in Tampa, Florida. Virtual viewings available for collectors anywhere in the world. Contact us to inquire. New to collecting? Read our collector guide →
A standard shipping rate is charged at checkout. Once your work is packed, we calculate the actual shipping cost for its size and destination. If there is a difference, we will follow up to either invoice the additional amount or refund the difference, whichever applies.
"We can see that the branches of a tree are similar in form to a bolt of lightning, or that rings of Saturn resemble the rings of water in a puddle. Yet they exist separately in time, space, and scale. There exists an order of continuity throughout the different realms."
John Gurbacs
About the Artist
John Gurbacs is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow with over fifty years of continuous practice exploring the fractal geometry hidden inside nature, the recurring patterns that connect a tree branch to a bolt of lightning, or the rings of Saturn to the rings of water in a puddle.
His process begins in the field. He photographs construction debris, tropical foliage, microscopic patterns, and underwater scenes, then builds collages until a connection reveals itself between forms and scales. From there he draws, then paints, some pieces taking months to complete.
His work sits in the permanent collections of the Tampa Museum of Art, the Leepa Rattner Museum of Art, the Polk Museum of Art, and the USF Contemporary Art Museum, along with commissions for Tampa General Hospital, Holland and Knight, Tampa Electric, and the Volusia County Courthouse. He has completed five major public murals across Florida, including the Sulphur Springs Mural, the largest of his career.
