From the Archives: Devestation

Here we have the dying embers of a vast destructive blaze.  This piece was painted during a daunting time when I felt my creativity was dwindling towards permanent extinction.  I'm happy to be writing this post and for my creativity to still be burning. I have felt this way again very recently, but the universe, just this past week, gave me back my hope.  :-)

The Totem

There is a drumming deep within me.

Firelight crackling and forest spirits twittering,
it calls out from the time before time.
It breathes a rhythm, a heartbeat,
an urging towards release,
and it will be born.
and it will be born.
and it will be born.
Like lightning,
it strikes backwards towards its desire.

recommended listening:
Sephiroth
Call of the Serpent
Draconian Poetry

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Reading from the Book of Night

In the twilight of the underworld,
The sun within waxes and wanes.
Days stacked like logs in the wood pile
kindle and burn on the mount of knowing.
Harlequin wall totem reads from the great book. 

The mother day sprays light to inoculate the reading
and fertilize the thoughts for growth.
Father predator spits darkness into her.
A deception that by her nature she converts into light.
His light within reads the necessity and
sees the voice and light needed for the reading.
Between them all, a darkness gestates
the darkness of absence, of emptiness,
of the void.
A darkness through which all things pass
to reach the light of the coming day.

In the desert of ignorance,
the scarab rolls its children into a sphere of darkness
tucking them safely into that fecund enclosure
knowing that at their birth,
they will eat their way to the light.

Recommended LIstening:
Subheim
Hollow
Approach

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

The Fear

And finally after 3 months of back breaking Rage, from stage left comes the source of all my drama.  Raw skinned and trembling, paralyzed and wide-eyed, My fear takes focus.

I find that I can't be angry now.  There is no resentment and my rage fades like a retreating storm.  I feel sadness for this impoverished part of myself, this portion of me with skin so thin that even the movement of air is like knives.

When I was finished with this piece I found no righteous vindication but instead a strange compassion.  I had thought the resolution of the quest to find the source of my Anger would find a villain to be defeated, but instead I find a victim.  Already defeated, and in that defeat a circling whirlwind of misplaced energy.  A leprous pariah to be given succor, relief, and healing.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

General Marrow, Lord of Bones

Within the dream of the abattoir,
beneath hair and toenail and skin,
he digs beneath our fat and past the organs.
His business is with the bone core.

He is the lightning knight of epiphany,
the unyielding harbinger of revelation,
the barrier breaker of the adamant secret,
and the herald of truth too long denied.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

You know...as big as he is, sometimes Cthulhu just sneaks up on you. I really had no intention of doing a Cthulhu piece, but there he was, and when Cthulhu shows up, you can't really say, "Well, I don't have time right now."  LOL.  You have to at least see what it is he wants.  I mean hey, It's friggin Cthulhu!

I am a little disappointed in the color.  It seems to have a dropped a bit in intensity from Photoshop to here.  I may need to adjust my monitor.  It was very late at night when I created this piece and my eyes were getting to that liquid rolling down my face point.  I may have to revisit this one in the daylight hours with a good nights rest under my belt.  I'm not sure that is allowed with this kind of piece.  :-P

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

Return of the Lord of the Forest

The Kingdom of the Blind

Darkness within and Darkness without. 

From the Darkness they come. 

They are of the darkness

and the holy land of Darkness. 

The House that Fear Built

Anger.  Wrath.  Rage.  I've been trying to create an image that exactly matches my feeling, but halfway through every piece, it changes.  It never stays anger.  In this case, I realize that the anger was built on a foundation of fear and dread.

I think this might be a message to myself.  The Rune Sowelu is mirrored in the piece as indication of damage from a negative solar experience.  Now that the light of the true sun is arriving the fear of that past damage is rising like a ghost pain, inspiring me to retreat from love and light.

In actuality, the true sun would heal the pain, but the previous negative encounter was so great as to cause a powerful panic driven fear of this type of encounter.  So the fear went to ground...underground.  From its seed has grown anger, rage, denial, and despair.

My Anger and Rage are defense mechanisms attempting to protect the part of me that was damaged in the previous incident.  Being only damage control, they were never meant to last and have begun to break down as the expenditure of energy required to maintain them is becoming greater than the energy needed to heal.  The current set of experiences in my life have pushed me further and further out of every comfort zone I have.  All my defense mechanisms are eroding and collapsing out of the necessity of energy conservation. All my issues are springing forth anew.  All my dead are returning to life.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

The Burning

This is me trying to sort out my fiery emotions.  Kind of hard when they gang up.  My original intent was to find a release for my emotional intensity.  I was creating this piece at the time the London riots were beginning, but I had no idea they were occurring until 3 days later. 

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring this one out.  I was actually intensely angry when I was working on this piece.  Now it is almost like looking at a firepit after it has been put out.  You remember the warmth and the smoke and maybe you burned your finger or something, but now there is just a black spot and some ashes and the acrid smell that something burned here.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

The Heat

Bit of an homage here to another of my favorite artists, Bill Sienkiewicz.  His and Chris Claremont's run on New Mutants is one of my all time favorites.  It was during my formative years as a comic book collector and to say Sienkiewicz's style had an influence on my own would be a vast understatement.

This is either sfter the fire or pre fire.  Maybe both.  It looks as though there has been a fire already, like smouldering embers, but also it seems like a blaze could ignite soon.  My original thought for this was a devilish type character, but as I continued to work on the piece it became something more.  Originally is was just a portrait, but now he is wearing some kind of elaborate head piece.  I think perhaps he may be royalty in some dark dimension.  Or it could simply be that this summer's heat has finally fried my brain completely and I can't see past it.  The heat is all there is.

{Created in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop}

EGO

Ah, the pride of ego. It can get us into many a tight spot. There may be more than ego involved here, but my first thought when I was finished was EGO. My original idea headed into it was Rage, but in the middle of that explosive flame, I found this little blue faced guy. A cool center to the radius of flame and destruction.

If I could have fire instead of hair I would. As long as I could turn it off and be invulnerable to its affects. LOL.  I'm sure I would have to buy shirts and hats more often, but you have to admit, it would look cool.  :-)  No such luck there.  Burned my finger yesterday with hot glue gun.  Now I have an ugly alien looking blister on my thumb.  Hooray...and ouch.

{Digital Images manipulated in Photoshop}

Loss of The Way Secrets Burn

This painting was acrylic on Masonite.  I believe the masonite might have been treated with something as the acrylic has begun to chip away from the masonite.  The damage is very sever and I don't think I can save the painting.  However I was able to get several good photos of it and I'm going to try to repair the existing damage on the digital images.  I will post that once it is complete.

{Acrylic on Masonite.}