Mark Sheeky Artworks

About this painting

The Love Reliquary was inspired by historical reliquaries, highly decorated, venerated casks for the containment of holy items. I wondered if a romance could be stored in such a way, a container for the relic of love. The artwork, therefore tells the story of a romance from start to finish.

The paintings show an angel on the moon on the left, a Rapunzel in her tower on the right. In the central panel, the lovers entwine, like statues in a garden. Nature surrounds the couple, and they show signs of age, moss, the passing of time. Yet, the scene is muted, the bird upside down, the embraces imperfect in an imperfect love. Thus the cabinet is a memory, a memory of something that was perfect once but is no more.

A silver 'brooch', containing a champagne cubic zirconia and padparadscha scarlet sapphire, can be glimpsed through the heart-shaped hole in the cabinet door which also forms the window of Rapunzel's tower. The poem on the front reads:

Bleak and withered tree,
stroke towards a silver sky.
A dream of home or memory,
and hope unlocked to die.

Much of the creation of this complex work involved the technical aspects of constructing an arch shaped cabinet. Two cabinets were made, one in 2011, and a second, final cabinet, in 2014. Both were the same size and included the same paintings. The earlier cabinet was largely made from plaster, and so very delicate. The gilded doors of the first cabinet were (and, at time of writing, are) preserved, but the rest of the first cabinet was destroyed when the second cabinet was made.

This cabinet is made from solid wood, covered largely with epoxy clay, which is much more physically robust than plaster. The clay was painted in a deep red as a base for the gilding. Most gilding is applied over a coloured base, this gives the gold a certain hue, and is designed to show through the inevitable small cracks and gaps in the gold. The doors were then gilded with over 100 leaves of 23.5 carat gold.