Leon Aarts – Feudal Wars (2008, acrylics on canvas board) Sold

A chromatic crusade in miniature. Feudal Wars unfolds like a medieval tapestry unraveled by modernism—stick-figure knights and turrets clash across a sunset horizon, their forms fractured into prismatic shards of pink, orange, and blue. Painted in the same crisis year as Spent, it channels Aarts' post-PNG dislocation into a satirical siege: feudal hierarchies as absurd theater, where lances are limp noodles and banners flap like forgotten flags. The board's intimacy amplifies the farce—war reduced to a witty skirmish on a postcard.

Feudal Wars is Aarts' buoyant broadside against hierarchy—a 2008 tonic to global gloom, where expressionism dons motley. It bridges the introspective hush of The Brush Off (2002) and the explosive Spent (later that year), proving his channel flows with farce as fiercely as fury. Frame in distressed gilt; the mock-medieval mount will mirror the mischief.

Score (out of 10): 8.4 A tilt at windmills in watercolor warfare—chivalrous, chaotic, and charmingly unchivalrous.