“I create my work more on the criteria of aesthetics and energy in the piece and less about meaning and backstory,” explains American muralist James Bullough of his latest laser sliced photorealist portrait in Roanoke Virginia. “In my opinion, that’s what art, especially public art is all about, to create a discussion, not to preach to the public and tell them my opinions.”

James Bullough in Roanoke, Virginia. (photo courtesy of the artist)

The image is full of movement and a foreboding feeling of things coming apart, in hurried disarray. The elegantly everyday form appears to be without her bearings, as if being swung from the center, or perhaps propelled backward and downward.

James Bullough in Roanoke, Virginia. (photo courtesy of the artist)

Perhaps the image is simply too abstract for passersby to contemplate, or perhaps it is so familiar in the US as to be a mirror of how many feel during this time where the foundations are being deliberately ripped from beneath the population, preparing them for…

“When people ask me at the wall what it is, or what it means, or who the woman is, I turn it back on them,” says James. “I ask for their thoughts and inevitably their interpretations are far more elaborate and varied than I could have imagined.”

James Bullough in Roanoke, Virginia. (photo courtesy of the artist)