Patterns w/ representation

"It Only Takes One", David Plotnick, Acryllic on Stretched Canvas, 12 x 24 in, 2010

Our teacher in Surface Research encouraged us to pick a subject we enjoy.  I have always been a fan of  zombie movies, games, books, memborbilia, etc.  I just can't help myself they are just that awesome.  I felt that grabbing arms were a perfect pattern, while not necessarily consistent in same shape or direction.  I felt there was an implied pattern; the repeated element of arms just trying to take and consume. On a deeper level, the zombie is the personification of most of our deepest fears obviously one being that of death.  It also leads people to question whether we are above mindless animals concerned solely with our appetite.  The sheer number of the undead could represent how the crowd can completely overshadow our individuality.  It can represent a notion that we can be swallowed up by many and left a forgotten soul.  The idea also follows a typical zombie formula: that one zombie can be the catalyst of creating a grabbing horde of these things. One bites a human turning them into a zombie then another then another then another.   In the critique, people thought that the figures at the bottom are people.  Its funny I looked at them more as zombies.  Their anonymous, faceless appearance adds an element of creepiness as well as the illusion of a unit of the shambling corpses meeting the viewer face to face.  Perhaps this was a spacing flaw on my part, if they were above ground and near the zombie the effect would have been easier to interpret, but I feel the singularity of that one zombie's influence would be lost.  Overall, I had fun!