The Spice Trader Featured in Hitch Magazine
The Hitch Magazine, a publication for The Canadian Association of Oilwell Digging Contractors, recently featured The Spice Trader, an oil painting by Jason Stout. The painting is "a commentary on civilizations acquiring land for the sake of commerce and distorting its original identity from the values of the previous owners. Oil derricks are now as common as trees and other natural elements, foreshadowing a future that is about to arrive. A small underworld passage exists, a purgatory pit of sorts, which is a comment on the cycle of death, decay, and burying of fossils needed to create fossil fuels. This alludes to a grander narrative commenting on the cycle of life."