Critique my paintings!

[matt_mcl]

I've recently re-taken up painting in acrylics, and just started with expressionist work, so I'd like your opinion on some of my paintings. They're here:

Le Vaisseau d'or
To Allos Angelos

The first one, "Le Vaisseau d'or" (The Ship of Gold), is an interpretation of a poem by the Quebecois poet Emile Nelligan, of which an English translation can be found at http://www.crosswinds.net/~montreal...shipofgold.html . It can be interpreted as representing the Canadian political situation: the ship of gold, filled with beautiful treasures, is lost because the three sailors (the three founding peoples?) cannot stop arguing over how to divide it up.

The second one, "To Allos Angelos" (The Other Angel), represents a questioning of ideologies. The wings, which represent the figure's sentience and human spirit, are not white; they're part black (representing the acceptance of the darker, but still valid part of human experience) and part rainbow-coloured, representing both the diversity of experience that can be lost through focusing on an ideology and the need for gay people to create new ways of thinking and leading our lives rather than adapting ourselves to structures unsuited to us. The staff is one of two tools associated with the masculine God in Wiccan magickal practice, but it is used instead of the sword in order to emphasize a masculinity that is in harmony with the Earth (whose flora and fauna are represented by the red and green ribbons); it's a tool used by a human for support when passing along the earth, rather than to hack one's way through. (If you're curious, the model is a very sweet and beautiful math professor from Massachusetts with whom I shared a wonderful week here earlier this summer.)

Opinions? Advice?