MatthewLopz explained: Leper Messiah(s)

As I stated in my previous post, here's a test series of me explaining a bit behind my thought process of a piece. I hope you find this useful, or at the very least interesting, as a way to connect a little bit more with me.

"Beware of false prophets."

Let's start by simply mentioning two concepts before diving a bit deeper.

One, the concept of pain is something I like to think about a lot for my art. Pain is something very broad and versatile; what hurts you might not hurt the other, and vice versa. Two, what do I gain from pain?

Gaining something through pain is a concept present in many cultures and religions. No good things come without sacrifice. However, the concept of "useless" pain also exists, meaning suffering and gaining nothing in return can also happen if your "sacrifice" isn't done well.

The idea of suffering with nothing in return is something that can make us very vulnerable. We seek guidance to not suffer, or to suffer "correctly," in order to reap the rewards of such suffering. From this state of vulnerability comes a big player into the equation, and that is whoever is there to guide us to suffer the right way.

What you want VS What you need

What I want is to be happy. I think that's what everyone wants, so what we expect from sacrifice is ultimately happiness — suffer now to enjoy tomorrow.

In this spiritual search for suffering and happiness, we set ourselves up. Our "mentor" might guide us into a placebo effect: suffering that isn't really suffering, and happiness that's never really there. What I mean by this is our fear can get so great that we "sacrifice" in ways that don't really hurt us, but we have a voice comforting us that we're doing it the right way, so we feel at ease — a comforting, stagnant state of mind. This can be visualized in many ways, such as preachers taking money for their church, where money is the sacrifice and heaven is the ultimate happiness, or even in completely different, non-religious scenarios, like a scammer selling online courses on how to make money, where money and time are the sacrifices and being successful is the happiness.

The process would go something like this: fear leads to guidance, fake guidance leads to the idea of happiness, and this idea of happiness under the conditions set by the guide is comforting but doesn't lead anywhere.

Symbolism 

I don't wanna go super in depth in this part but i wanna talk about little visual things i added to help convey ideas here.

White clothes, blonde hair vs. Red and dark hair:

A contradiction of the symbols of light being good and darkness being bad: we see the fake prophets in white clothes and all blonde hair. I did this because fake guides will take more care in looking the part rather than actually being the part.

Fake Halos:

Not much to explain here that's not obvious; the fake halos are just there to convey that they're fake prophets. They contrast, of course, with the shiny round halo of our black-haired lady.

Being, not pretending:

Being yourself rather than appearing friendly, not caring about the place or time, but staying truthful to yourself all the time — that's what I hoped to convey by contrasting our black-haired lady's face with the fake smiles of the other prophets.

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And that's it, i hope you enjoyed this text and let me know if this is something you'd like more of, have a good day and much love!