What does this have to do with Halloween!

I've been busy with some commissions lately but somewhere in there I was completely distracted from my usual haunted activities by thinking about really, really colorful things. With only a few days until Halloween I should be talking about my usual ghosts and haunted houses, but I wanted to share this before any more time passed, just because! And anyway I think something strange with stripes and a devil face in it is kind of seasonal too...At any rate, this painting was inspired by listening to electronic music and thinking about early 80s video games, the ones where you are trying to build things with pipes, for instance -- but things went haywire and some flowers crept in.

Where I am right now the leaves don't change and there's not a crisp note of autumn in the air quite yet (maybe late a night, when the armadillos come out) but I am still in a fall frame of mind, watching Dark Shadows at night and various movies with the words "vampire" and "Dracula" in them.

Nothing new, of course -- recent viewings include the favorite La Vampire Nue, a couple versions of Dracula; Dracula AD 1972 and other Hammer offerings. And my reading for the moment is still Salem's Lot, which I started several weeks ago in a strange fit of not reading something from the 19th century! But I'll be back there soon!

More haunted art coming soon, into the winter months...because Christmas was always a time for telling ghost stories in Victorian times!...

Three new pieces of surreal, dark and ghostly art

Autumn makes me paint, so I have a few new pieces to throw at the Internet this week. First here's an 8 x 10 on stretched canvas called "Glass Worm of the Rainbow Caverns." It sounds like the name of an old D&D/AD&D module and maybe this does look a little like it could be the cover art for one...at any rate, it's my nightmare landscape of the moment. I like things that are both dark and colorful at the same time, with colors emerging from a mostly grey landscape. This is also kind of influenced by cleaning out the basement lately after flooding. No, I didn't see anything living down there, but the subconscious mind does strange things sometimes.

"The one that didn't get away" is a little 5 x 7 ghost bottle, a wispy little sheet ghost held in by a cork while other spirits frolic in the distance.

"The Haunted Orchard" is another little surreal dream world for Halloween and autumn enjoyment. It's also 5 x 7. I read an Algernon Blackwood story that took place in an orchard and it suggested this image, though I can't recall the details of the story since I've read about 20 ghost stories in the last week and they are all blending together!

I'm running out of dark paint, better get some more. :P

Into the cavern

Oh goodness gracious but time does fly. I have a million half finished posted that I need to post here, but headaches, work and other obligations keep me from completing them. So for the moment I am just saying hello. How are you, readers? I've been looking at everyone else's blog but haven't been tending to my own.

I am still really into doing these figure paintings, with the ambiguous featureless forms. I never get tired of them! They are always floating around, drifting or reaching out for things. Ahh, they are a fun bunch. The colors in this one are inspired by malachite, that glorious black-green rock that I love so much, and a sort of periwinkle bluebell blue. That is a tribute to the bluebells that I love so much in May and can't wait to see blossom again, many months from now.

If you can tell, I am not thinking much about the upcoming holidays, though I wish everyone a happy one. I usually celebrate holidays "when I get around to it," which is rarely on the actual date, and almost never with store bought gifts. But whatever works! It always sneaks up too fast on me, personally!

Happy winter, everyone!