Larry McKim “Steve Bannon” acrylic on canvas

Artist Statement:
These paintings are taken from a series of thirty paintings entitled, “Trump’s Cabinet of Rhinoceroses”. The series is based on the Ionesco play, “Rhinoceros”, in which members of a village in France start to turn into rhinoceroses but nobody notices until it’s too late. The play is often read as a response to the sudden upsurge of Fascism and Nazism during the events preceding World War II. The parallel to today’s politics is what drives this body of work. The irony of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp is obvious, the amount of corruption in his cabinet is unprecedented.