Painting description

The painting has dark, muted colors, mainly shades of gray, which create a gloomy, downright creepy atmosphere. In the foreground we see a strange figure, a man with a white mask and a tube sticking out of his mouth, which calls to mind nightmarish dreams. His expression is terrifying, eyes wide open, as if something awful had surprised or shocked him. The background is uniformly dark, which underscores the subject’s isolation. The artist uses contrasting colors—or maybe there’s another term for the technique—that focuses our attention on details. The style is surreal, evoking expressionist painting, but also something of comic books. There’s something unsettling about it, like distant dreams that refuse to leave the mind. To a kid, it’s a weird man with a tube—maybe he wants to blow up balloons? The painting stirs feelings of unease, confusion, but also fascination, because after all each of us sometimes feels strangely different. “Wow, what a picture,” one might think, looking at it and pondering its deeper meaning. As if it were screaming, but without sound. So we can only guess what the artist really had in mind.