Keith Cunningham’s artworks of winged figures present one of the most distinctive and symbolically resonant threads in his oeuvre. These figures are not angelic in the traditional religious sense. Rather, they function as ambiguous presences: part-human, part-animal, suspended between flight and fall, protection and threat. They are less about narrative than they are about states of being — psychological, physical and formal. In his drawings, often executed in charcoal, ink, or pencil, Cunningham treats the winged figure as a compositional challenge. Wings are rendered not as decorative appendages, but as formal devices: planes, arcs, or masses that alter the structure of the figure and the space around it. The human form is sometimes presented in a state of tension, engaged in brutal fights.

In his oil paintings, the imagery becomes denser, more layered. Wings and bodies are embedded in dark or muted grounds, emerging from and receding into the surface. Cunningham uses a typically restricted palette and a tactile approach to paint, building physical presence through texture and tone. The figures often feel caught in a moment of transformation or uncertainty, their meanings open-ended, their boundaries unclear. These winged forms echo many of Cunningham’s key concerns: ambiguity, duality, isolation, and the formal possibilities of reduction. They are not illustrations of a known type, nor figures of Christian devotion, but meditations on potential, vulnerability and metamorphosis.