Dark side of the holidays

I'm delighted to now be a member of the Etsy Dark Team - still dotting a few i's as I update all my pages to reflect that, but I thought I'd celebrate by posting a few "dark" items of gothic sensibility that I haven't shared in awhile. Above, "Mistress of the Purple Tower" was the first painting that I did in 2010 or the last in 2009 -- I remember working on it right on New Year's Eve into the morning.

For a sampling of the kind of things the team offers, just type EtsyDarkTeam in the search field in Etsy, visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/EtsyDarkTeam or the blog page at http://etsydarkteam.blogspot.com/.



"She felt bad for the beetle and wished to release it from its glass prison" is the overlong title for this little painting, which I did in 2008 when I started doing small paintings to illustrate little images that seemed like they belonged in old gothic stories. Women with candles, ghosts wandering through towers, and all the other things that have come to dominate my recent doodles. I wanted to give them names that sounded like sentences from a strange story.


"The pomegranate seeds glistened like blood" is another in this little series -- a ghost haunted by the blood red fruit of the pomegranate in a cold tower. As a side note, this has very wintry colors to my mind -- the ice blues and the berry blood red.

"Alone Again" is a 9 x 12 painted in very early 2009 to reflect the cold and distant feeling of winter. I like that feeling in winter actually -- in January, when the holidays are over and there's nothing but a dismal grey sky, grey trees and maybe snow, depending on where you are. I would always take a vacation week at that time of year just to be alone and read and paint. This is a nice little reflection of that feeling.

My coupon code HOLIDAY20 good for 20% off is still active as of this writing, Dec. 3, and I will leave it active at least for a little while longer, in the spirit of things...because why not!