MARTINI MURDER

Debbie McCulley's painting titled "Party Animals- Murder of Crows" reflects Macbeth's desires and fate. The painting depicts six crows plucking olives from martini glasses with smug looks on their faces. The glasses are isolated and therefor accessible. The pungent olives are desirable and initially rewarding. However, each crow's accomplishment is soon degraded when the crow is poisoned by the alcohol. In the corner of the painting is what I interpret to be a crow's ghost. If the story told by this painting were to be translated into Shakespearean terms, the olive-eating crows would be Macbeth killing King Duncan with relatively little effort and then enjoying the short-lived royal life. The alcohol which the olives soaked in, representing MacDuff and Malcolm, came back to haunt the perpetrator. Macbeth underestimated the implications of his deed and those unforseeable consequences were responsible for Macbeth's death.

         The colors in "Party Animals- Murder of Crows" relate to Macbeth, as well. The olives are green, ironically symbolizing safety and life, because that is how Macbeth forsees his future after killing the king. Green also represents the desire to increase or expand, which flawlessly ties into Macbeth's plan to increase his reign of power. In contrast, the inside of the olives are red. This color symbolizes temper, danger, and blood. The hidden olive center foreshadows Macbeth's unexpected and unfortunate end. The black crows are a representation of Macbeth's inner demons because black is the absense of light. The background is made up of different swirling shades of orange. Orange is believed to increase hunger, so the background is reminiscent of Lady Macbeth influencing her husband to crave the king's lifestyle and kill him for it. McCulley's painting is a portrayal of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and that's not only because a group of crows is called a murder.