"Longing Bends the Spine"

Title: Longing Bends The Spine Artist: Danny Gordo Medium: oil on wood panel Year: 2025 Size: 18 x 24 inch (45.72 x 60.96 cm) This painting is part of my ongoing Oracles series, which explores how power—familial, institutional, spiritual—shapes and fractures personal identity. The figure depicted is a partial torso, its head and limbs removed, yet its musculature still pulses with quiet tension. It leans forward, not in collapse, but in yearning—caught in the posture of reaching for something it’s been told it cannot have. The form emerges from a weathered tree trunk, suggesting the interweaving of growth and loss. In this visual language, trees act as metaphors for resilience: even when cut down or reshaped, they still contain memory. Likewise, the human body here holds the echo of a fuller self. The gesture is deliberately ambiguous—grief, reverence, desire. What is being sought, and what was sacrificed in the process?  My practice is grounded in classical realism and anatomy, but