When someone’s last hope is you, will you become their mercy or their ruin?
Between Mercy and Ruin brings together three monumental paintings by Mais Al-Sheikhly exploring who we become when another person is vulnerable. Through inner conflict, collective cruelty, and the unexpected faces of kindness and betrayal, the works confront our capacity to protect, wound or turn away. Here, mercy emerges from darkness, while ruin arrives wearing the face of trust.
Works on View
Acrylic on Canvas
Raven Feast confronts the cruelty of bullying and the silence that allows it to continue. The ravens embody the roles people assume around another person’s suffering: aggressor, spectator, accomplice and witness. Here, the feast consumes confidence, a sense of belonging and the belief that one deserves to be loved. The painting bears witness to wounds that outlast the crowd, while recognizing the courage of one person who refuses to participate in its cruelty.
Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas
Spanning sixteen feet, Face Off gives form to the struggle between compassion and cruelty within us. Love, resentment, humility and pride compete for influence, shaping how we treat the people around us. The painting traces how an inner conflict reach beyond ourselves, shaping choices that can damage trust or offer kindness when it is needed most, What begins within us can become the wound someone else carries.
Acrylic on Canvas
Heaven and hell exchange places when the one we fear offers sanctuary and the one we trust delivers us to harm. In Unexpected Kindness, Unimaginable Betrayal, an angel opens hell’s gates while a devil shields the innocent from approaching hyenas. As the angel loses its wings and the devil earns them, the painting explores the pain of misplaced trust and the grace of compassion found where we least expect it.
