Body Snatcher (2025) Original Oil Painting by Ben Stephenson

Imagine a myth trapped inside a vessel; primordial limbs twisted like smoke signals from a forgotten rite. In this piece, a mysterious jar holds a creature - part demon, part fossil, part hallucination - it is both prisoner and prophet. Oversized hands reach for a sky that doesn’t exist. Eyes stare straight through the glass, past you.

There’s a war going on inside the jar: motion against stillness, memory against invention. The silhouetted figure could be dancing, or it could be writhing in eternal revolt. Wild flora cuts across the foreground like witnesses, or maybe accomplices, casting their blurred shadows over the beast's pale form.

The palette leans into a dreamscape of deep blues, ghostly whites, and sudden shocks of warmth.

This is a painting for anyone who knows that mythology doesn’t live in books - it lives in objects, in rituals and fever dreams, in the quiet space between what you see and what you think you see.

Materials used:

Oil paint on canvas

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 50 x 80 x 2cm (unframed)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the back
• Style: Unspecified
• Subject: Still life

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