Mother Earth Life and Death | Blake Emory Painting

Original oil painting by Blake Emory · Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker · Available at Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery, Tampa, Florida · Ships worldwide

A woman stands facing you against a wall of scraped red, her long dark hair streaming off to the right as if a wind just hit it. Her gaze is level and direct. Half of her face drops into deep blue shadow, and two pale streaks cross her cheek like war paint. In her raised hand she holds a staff topped with a skull. Across her chest a bird with spread wings is cut and drawn into the skin, with small crossed marks scratched on either side. Her skin is painted in cool greens, yellows, and blues, and the red behind her fades to deep blue at the bottom of the canvas.

The two halves of the title are both on her. The skull is in her hand, held up and carried like something she owns. The bird is on her body, open and rising. She does not pick one. Life and death sit on the same person, one in the hand and one over the heart.

Mother Earth is not gentle here. She is the one who feeds everything and the one everything goes back to, and the painting lets her look at you like she knows exactly which one you came to see.

Collector’s Note

At this scale and intensity, this is a painting for a room that can hold it, such as a living room, a gallery wall, an office, or a space where people gather. It is not decoration, it is a presence, and collectors who love figurative work with real weight tend to respond to it fast. Seeing it in person or on a virtual viewing will show you the scraped red and the layering far better than a photograph.

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. Payment plans are arranged directly with Marcolina, and every inquiry is answered personally within 24 hours. Each original comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. 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.

About the Artist

Blake Emory was born in 1983 and raised in Plant City, Florida, in a family of artists, inventors, and musicians. Alongside his brother James, creativity was the family language: music, theater, sculpture, set design, and mural and canvas painting, all treated as one continuous practice. He sold his first drawing in third grade and has not really stopped since.

Painting and sculpture became the throughline. He debuted his Zebra Love Collection at Art Basel Miami in 2014, made the life-size Babe Ruth sculpture now at the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and has painted large murals across Tampa Bay and New Mexico. His giant octopus mural at Cage Brewing in St. Petersburg, painted with Guillo Pérez 3, was named by Creative Loafing Tampa Bay among the area’s must-see murals.

He also works in film. His short The Ethereal: Episode I was shown at the Salvador Dalí Museum and premiered at Tampa Theater in 2025, and a second episode is in production. He lives and works in St. Petersburg, Florida, and his original paintings and sculpture are available through Marcolina’s Fine Arts Gallery.

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