Analysis of Trenton Doyle Hancock's Descension and Dissention

    Trenton Doyle Hancock, an American fine artist, was born in 1974 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and grew up in Paris, Texas. Hancock received his Bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University, and his Master’s from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Hancock creates prints, drawings, and collaged felt paintings that tell stories of a fantastical nature through use of abstract expressionism and surrealism. He also mixes drawing with abstract expressionist painting or collage.
     The Descension and Dissention is a piece of collage in the “We Done All We Could and None of It’s Good” collection that was exhibited in the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, from January 14 to March 10, 2011. The depiction is that of a white skeleton being prevented from falling into a
wasteland of dismembered skeleton parts and muscles—basically a land of death. The skeleton is suspended by ropes dangling from a triangular surface at the topmost center of the painting. The triangular surface consists of colored door, and it represents heaven or hope for resurrection. The background of the painting is black, which together with the skeletal wasteland oozes a feeling of fear and death.
     In the bottom middle, there is an atmospheric perspective of water, with a little boat resting on the water. The boat appears to be sailing with full mast away from the skeletal wasteland. There seems to be a motif of death versus life, or better still desolation versus hope/revival. Even in the wasteland of death, there is still a tiny boat, ready at full mast, ready to escape from the wasteland, although its destination is unknown.
     Also the skeleton seems to be in a state of revival, it is propped and three buckets are placed in a triangular manner, representing deity and the creator of all things. An equilateral triangle is regarded, by the Masons, as the most perfect of figures, and a representative of the great principle of animated existence, each of its sides referring to one of the three departments of creation: the animal, vegetable, and mineral. Also it can be interpreted in many different senses: spirit/mind/body in a circle of synthesis or past/present/future enclosed in the ring of eternity. Surprisingly, the center of the triangle made by the three buckets is the torso of the skeleton, where most important body organs are situated: the heart, the lung, the kidney and the intestines. Furthermore, there is repetition of threes in the body, the body is divided into the head, the torso and the lower body; the head into left, right and mid brain; the upper body into left, right hands and trunk; the lower body is divided into left, right leg and the reproductive organ etc. In light of which, we can interpret the triad as unison, unity and perfection; therefore the skeleton is undergoing perfect revitalization of itself.
     The buckets are filled with pinkish substance. The upper left bucket is upturned with its content flowing to the torso of the skeleton, there are white tear drops mixed in its content, however, the torso seems to soak the pinkish liquid without dripping any drop to the body of skeletons in the wasteland. The second bucket, at the lower left side of the collage on the other hand collects the pinkish substance dripping from tears and sweat of the downturned face of the skeleton. The pinkish substance seems to be in the process of rejuvenating the skeleton, almost like a clinical transfusion of blood.
     The collage in all, is a juxtaposition of two extremes: life and death; beautiful and ugly; desolation and hope, heaven and hell, the triangle versus the skeletal wasteland; captivity and freedom, in the tying up of the skeleton and the boat ready at full mast; and good versus evil. Ironically, the collage reminds me of the biblical story of Ezekiel and the valley of Dry Bones.