This is a powerful, large-scale figurative oil that pivots dramatically from earlier still-life serenity into the realm of contemporary history painting with strong allegorical and religious overtones.

The composition is built on a classic crucifixion-derived triangle, but inverted and exploded: a bruised and bloodied young working-class man in modern dress (white tank top, blue jeans, wrist wraps) stands as the central martyr-saint. His posture defiant yet exhausted, surrounded by five winged, half-naked figures that blend the iconography of avenging angels, demons, and fallen humanity.

The palette is deliberately violent: deep umbers and cold greenish-blacks in the void-like background contrast with the raw, wet reds of wounds and the electric magentas and scarlets of the draperies and wings. Flesh tones range from livid corpse-pale to bruised purple and inflamed crimson, giving every body a sense of having been flayed by life itself.

The paint handling is thick and expressive in the wounds and wings, almost sculptural, while the faces are rendered with a smoother, almost porcelain finish that makes their anguish even more unsettling.

At the lower left, a small child in contemporary clothes cowers and hides his face, the only figure turned away from the viewer—an emotional anchor of pure vulnerability that prevents the painting from tipping into pure melodrama.

Light sources are ambiguous (a cold, almost surgical glow from above-right), so the figures appear both illuminated for judgment and swallowed by darkness.

Stylistically, it owes debts to late Goya, the religious surrealism of Francis Bacon, and the theatrical martyrdoms of Caravaggio and Ribera, yet the clothing and physical types root it unmistakably in 21st-century America.

It is simultaneously a passion play, a protest piece, and a vanitas on violence.

Recent comparable sales (2023–2025)

Daniel Pitín (Czech, living) – dark figurative allegories around 48×60″ → $18–28k at European auctions
Odd Nerdrum apprentices/followers (large kitsch-mythological canvases) → $15–35k private sales
Conor Harrington (Irish, living) – big violent/ritual masculine pieces → routinely $30–70k at secondary market
Texas-specific: Michael Bise (narrative/religious outsider-ish) has cleared $12–18k for much smaller drawings

Posthumous Texas estates with a tragic/back-story premium (e.g., David Bates early work after his death would have jumped 3–5×) regularly double or triple previous highs when a “masterwork” surfaces.

(Includes museum-grade crating and insured shipping continental U.S.)