The Horla
2011
Inkjet on watercolour paper
85 x 56 centimeters
The Horla is a classic horror short story about demonic posession written by the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, in 1887. It describes a comfortable bourgeois gentleman's descent into madness after he realises his malaise is caused by an sinister invisible incubus who visits him at night. This scenario is a staple of horror cinema which I wished to avoid. The solution was to go with an offbeat homo-erotic approach where an overweight man sleeping in a cheap motel room is straddled by a muscular glassy demon. The Maupassant character has a psychological strength which he used to combat the parasitic creature but I decided to portray a man who would probably succumb and who could also be uncharitably viewed as a loser by our competitive society.
The Horla : Wikipedea
The Horla : Project Gutenberg free e-book