Return from the long slumber, new art and efforts

 I didn't think that Blogger/Blogspot was still a going concern with most people but I see that there's actually a ton of people (or bots—hello, bots) viewing this so I'm going to bring it back tentatively. For one thing, you don't know about me and BIRDWATCHING, which I've documented at length on Instagram and other sites. More on that in a bit though. I've only done one of these so far but I've taken enough pictures to keep me busy for a while working them into paintings. 

My goal right now is to get a good pair of binoculars, and to replace my wide-angle lens that seems to have stopped working. I mostly use the 300 mm though. Anyway, I'm not a photographer by any means but it's been a huge source of calm and comfort to find all of the amazing birds that live in my neighborhood in Texas.

Above is my greatest recent victory, grabbing a picture of a scissor-tailed flycatcher while I was on the phone with my mom for Mother's Day, and one appeared right in front of me. 

Since I stopped posting here, we moved, some things changed at work, Covid happened, I went to grad school and got a master's degree in English, and now I'm back pretty much back to my old routine and painting and wondering where all the time went.

For now here are some new paintings, and we'll figure everything else out later.

My first love is 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons-inspired art so that's been most of my time in recent years, going back to what I loved to do when I was 13-17.

And more recently, a love of vintage Halloween postcards is still a thing. 

Here are some new places where I have social media accounts:

Threads: ArtBySarada

Bluesky: Xelucha

Here are some old places that I've resurrected recently: 

Tumblr: ArtBySarada

Pinterest: ArtBySarada

Bird adventures, gothic exploration and classic D&D are all going concerns for the time being, more about those soon.

Haunted carnivals in the fog

Sometimes an image will linger with you for a while, and quietly percolate in the back of your mind as it shapes itself. About a year ago, a carnival was set up down the road in a bank parking lot. At this time of year, February/March, there tends to be a lot of fog at night, as the temperatures and humidity struggle to sort out the seasons, and what may seem like a nice evening for a stroll can quickly turn into one sliced through by biting wind, or muffled by thickening mist.

It goes without saying that a late night drive in the fog has an otherworldly, ethereal atmosphere. If you've watched enough horror movies it may seem as though a shambling figure might burst through the shifting mists, arms outstretched, clothed in shredded garments from the grave. Add an empty carnival in a parking lot and you begin to feel a little post-apocalyptic.

This isn't a tutorial but I wanted to show how experiences and viewing other works of art can act as inspiration, over time, as I started a foggy painting back on that night over a year ago but I never filled it in until recently.

"Carnival in the Fog" is available as a 9 x 12 original acrylic painting on Etsy
or by request as a print

There is something unspeakably haunting about an empty carnival at night. Countless horror films, and a few video games (I'm thinking of Silent Hill 3, since I haven't played any new games in the last 10 years) use this as a stage for creeping, lurking characters and creatures to stagger and slink from out of the fog.

You can tell that the colors are bright and festive, but they are muted and dampened by the darkness and oppressive, damp mist. Even the streetlights are diffused and distant, hovering like landing UFOs in the background. The machines of amusement are poised robot-like, painted clown colors and raised in threatening positions around the perimeter.

A ferris wheel could almost be a torture device, against this misty monotone, creaking in the dampness, swaying uncomfortably.

A pendulum cage hangs still and silent, painted with gaudy colors, waiting for daylight to bring it back to life.

In other words, it all puts me in the mood of a film like 1962's "Carnival of Souls," which speaks to this same surreal, nightmarish mindset, and captures a solitary, drifting journey through the horrific wonders of the abandoned pavilion.

That feeling of being lost, alone, disoriented, and in a dream state, is one that no romantic-minded person can resist when coming across a bleak, abandoned landscape.

In filling out my own thoughts and impressions, reflecting on my favorite scenes of abandoned amusement and surreality, images like these flashed through my mind, of lost and haggard figures, stumbling, emerging from swamps and lakes, hung with seaweed, moss or the clothes they were buried in.

Sometimes the threat is palpable, and discernible...

Sometimes a shadowy figure merely lurks in the doorway or at the edge of vision, and you can't be sure if it is friend, foe or a reflection.

I think I had my carousel in the fog looking at me for months as I wondered what to place around it. I thought about the photographs of abandoned amusement parks around the world, that I've come across online over the years, such as this one in Pripyat, Ukraine, that has been well-documented:

Photo from Wikipedia, public domain

While images of shattered carousel horses, grimacing clown faces, broken bumper cars and forgotten snack stands, festooned with popcorn garlands and tiny colorful flags and lights, were all appealing features to consider, at the end I just wanted a few balloons, and a couple of ambiguous figures. Like the shadows I see outside at night, moving around in the March fog, they could simply be fellow wanderers, or perhaps they are something much worse.

 

I hope your own experiences and viewing habits help to inform your personal expression and creativity, as we look around and within for inspiration in all manner of places, but strange and familiar.

Notes from the Gothic Graveyard

About a month ago I was listening to a relatively new compilation 2-CD of "post-punk and dark pop" from 1981-1986 Spain, called Sombras:

Delving into the lesser-explored gothic and post-punk corners of the late-70s through the mid-80s is one of my major musical interests, but there has been relatively little available in terms of reissues of previously unknown obscurities, to my knowledge, so this was an exciting find for me. Since then I've uncovered a few more modern bands that capture that aesthetic (Ashrae Fax, you are amazing), and also found a few private-press albums from that time period that scratch my itch (the 1986 album by the band the Soul Merchants was another recent find). 

The spidery Siouxsie guitars, the echoing empty-room Joy Division drums, and the throb of a Bauhaus bass are all represented in the tracks on that compilation, along with vocals across the spectrum of agony and dolor. It immediately put me in a mind of wanting to gather up pits and pieces of fishnet and spiderweb, silver rings and coffin-shaped things, as I have been known to do since age 14. 

I tried to capture a little of this aesthetic in a new little painting, "Meet Me at the Cemetery Gates," which I have up now. I have vague plans to do more art along these lines, though at the moment I am just of the mind to do cemetery-based paintings with this theme. Among other things, it's fun to play dress-up with paint, putting characters in outfits that I like.

The girls in the painting are both wearing things from my own wardrobe, and carrying purses that I've had at one point or another. Including little details like that is important to me, in capturing that moment where you are hanging out on a spring weekend with your friend taking cemetery photos in 1989. You have to put down your purse, take off your glasses and try to look serious even though you were just quoting the Young Ones to each other.

In fact, here is some photographic proof of myself with a lifelong friend, as we did this very thing some time around 1991. I'm not wearing a gothic gown at this particular moment, but the idea is there.

In fact, armed with black and white film and a home darkroom in the basement, I did quite a bit of cemetery photography back in the day.

And fortunately, New Jersey is full of old and interesting cemeteries and monuments in historic areas.

For now we bid farewell to the graveyard, but I suspect I will do a lot more art along these lines with my musical inspiration. This was never a phase to be grown out of or looked back on with amusement, for me. I love cemeteries, gothic guitars and spidery gowns with even more enthusiasm now -- fueled by several decades of continued musical enjoyment, along with literary and cinematic inspiration, to know that this is a world that will always feel like home to me.

Dragons, and some dungeons

Dragons were kind of where everything started when I began painting in 1986 just before I turned 13. Although they weren't the absolute first thing I ever painted, they were definitely one of the main subjects along with unicorns and would-be D&D characters. Well, after about four years of that, by the end of high school my interest in surrealism and color and more abstract art took over for a long time and I mainly painted surreal alien landscapes.  But one thing I really miss from being 16 or so was the way that I used to do relatively large paintings, and patiently work on them for a long time, getting lots of details in as I figured out exactly how I wanted to paint.  After having a dream last night about a bunch of large-ish paintings that my dream-self forgot that I did, I thought I'd get a few larger canvases and revisit that old style.

"Opal Dragon's Eyrie" is my first dragon painting in many years, though not too big, at 14 x 18 inches. It's too big for a regular scanner so I had to take a photo (above) and a series of scans (example below) but I'm very happy that I was able to snap back to 1989 and indulge in my old subject matter, with a little less clumsiness of brushstroke. I still don't technically know what I'm doing, but I'm glad that I'm still 16 at heart somewhere.

My mom has been kind enough to take some photos of paintings that I still have around her house, so here are a couple from 1989, which I consider my "peak" year for doing 16 x 20 fantasy paintings with intense detail. I don't know that I really named paintings back then (I barely do now...) but I am really terribly fond of this one of cave adventurers. There's something very satisfying about working on the details of a big pile of treasure, or on a dragon's scales.  These were inspired by my childhood loved of first edition D&D (or AD&D) which I almost never played with other people but certainly collected a lot of books and accessories. Poring over them and creating characters and storylines was very satisfying even without actually playing the game.

Here is another dragon that I have a soft spot for! I was very happy with the way I did the crystals, at the time. This might have been 1990 or still 1989.  These frames were all made by my late grandfather...I wish I had learned to make them myself too, it would be incredibly handy! I did do a little woodworking as a young thing, but nothing practical, I'm afraid.

Below is a golden dragon in a snowy landscape that I am also very attached to. I would like to have the patience to do a forest like this again!

Finally, for laughs, here is a much earlier attempt when I was trying to work out exactly how to use a paintbrush.  I think that I came a long way from those early attempts to the ones you see above from around 1989.

More nostalgia on the way, I have dozens more paintings to share - including some that are no longer in my collection...alas, I should have just held onto them all, I'll never be 14 again!

Rabbits I have known

"Carrot Cottage" 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas board.

I realized recently when my friend who maintains the blog Painted Lady Fingers got a little pet bunny, that I haven't painted rabbits in a long time.  I used to do quite a few paintings with rabbits in them though they were usually focused around spring time, as I posted earlier this year at Easter time.

Most of us have a lot of bunnies in life early on if we ever came across Peter Rabbit, Brer Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, the Velveteen Rabbit, uh...the Trix Bunny...it goes on and on!  But they also have been wonderful silent mysterious moon creatures to me, inspiring things like Kenneth Anger's Rabbit Moon:



Or haunted the book that delighted my childhood with the promise of gold and jeweled riches, "Masquerade" by Kit Williams (I still have positively no idea how anyone ever solved that puzzle). (...and here is a nice blog post about rabbits, below, I found in my search for an image for that book).

Or, perhaps most significantly, in "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, the unforgettable novel that introduced us to Fiver, Hazel and the other rabbits who spoke their own language (yes, I memorized snippets of it in sixth grade) and had epic struggles and battles in the English countryside. 

This book was so emotional for me around the age of 10-14 that although I read it at least three times then, I haven't been able to go back and read it again because I know I'd cry too much.  The same thing happened with the Duncton Woods books about moles.  I drew pictures of each of the rabbits for a little project in school around sixth grade, but of course they all pretty much looked the same...still, I think that is where my basic idea of how to draw a rabbit came about.

So in realized that I have been gravely short on rabbits in my art lately, I'm going to start trying to incorporate more of them, as evidenced by my little Halloween rabbit painting up above, "Carrot Cottage."  Some will be naturalistic like thee little bunny you see above and some will be anthropomorphic and cartoonish but I will try to include them more often than Easter time as I remember how important they have been to me throughout my life.

Psychedelic prints and their inspiration

Several years ago i did a number of paintings for my own enjoyment, with very colorful, psychedelic themes, inspired (as usual) by thoughts of psychedelic horror movies, strange early 70s conspiracy/occult books, album covers, and other things that I find visually interesting.

But I was so attached to them that I kept them, even though I wanted to share these with like-minded folks who like the same sort of things. It finally occurred to me though, that I could offer them as prints -- 8 x 10, since they were at least that large themselves, but I've finally started on this project.

The above painting, "Paisley Priestess" is probably an idealized image of how I see myself! She has long hair, a bright orange paisley dress, and is amidst a background of secondary colors (green, purple, and her own orange) swirling with strange globules and snake or tentacle-textured webbing. I threw in a few magic sigils which represent the planet Venus. The planetary symbols are a nod to the alchemical surrealism of the film "The Holy Mountain" though the idea of a psychedelic knife-wielding woman probably comes a bit more from the cheesy movie "Mantis in Lace."



"Keeper of the Moon Pool" is inspired by the same sources, with moon sigils this time, and a fire-winged, star-eyed goddess swirling her divination pool in deep outer space. I was thinking in particular of a book called "The Moon Pool" (A. Merritt) for the title of this, though the imagery is just a subconscious meandering on my part. I hadn't seen this particular cover (below) for that book when I painted this but there are a few thematic similarities. Psychedelic outer space horror, though, is something that I could pretty much swim around in on a full-time, permanent basis.



"Earth Welcomes You" is a painting that I previously sold, but I was inspired by thoughts of UFO/Conspiracy books like the ones published by Adventures Unlimited Press, and the strange "educational" films of the Unarius Academy of Science such as this one. My goal was just to create a colorful image that captured a collection of unrelated occult, New Age religion, UFO and hippie ideas, in such a way that it might actually accurately represent someone's theory, somewhere, of mysterious doings being afoot. There are some Tarot and Qabalistic references, a UFO alien obviously, some mysterious little people (a gnome), and various astrological and Masonic references. I'm sure it all ties together somehow. I also had thoughts of one of my favorite hippie cult bands, Ya Ho Wha 13, while I was painting this -- i think I was listening to them while I did, actually. One of the things that all of these different worlds have in common though are the use of striking images -- eyes, pyramids, wings, alchemical or astrological symbols, and lots and lots of color.

I also have several dream images that I've kept in my personal collection that are meant simply to be exercises in color and creativity. This piece, "The Key to Dreams," is just a visual representation of inspiration -- that feeling that you've unlocked a whole realm of things that are going to overwhelm and excite you. the main figure is blank and featureless, open to possibility. I did quite a lot of paintings with a "blank" character that represents both the artist and the viewer, who are just along for the ride in a colorful or alien landscape.

This painting I've always just referred to, psychedelically enough, as "Trip Lord" in my own notes, but I gave it a proper title now that it's available as a print, "Adrift in the Primary Sea." I was thinking of someone sitting back and listening to, oh, I don't know, let's say Hawkwind, and feeling carried away by groovy sounds.


Finally as a postscript, I have made prints of my "Poe Toaster" painting that I blogged about previously, slightly adjusted for aspect ratio in a print form.

I have a few more paintings from my personal collection or which I have previously sold, that I'm going to add to my print offerings in time, but it's just nice to be able to share them and tell the story of how they came to be.

Firefly squid, pulp horror and surreal landscapes

I can't promise a cohesive theme, but I thought I would collect three of my most recent paintings here with a little bit of explanation, since they come from very different places.

"Sunset in the Valley of Shapes" is a little something I painted the other night with perhaps too vague a title, because when I painted this I was thinking of an alien planet populated by the strange and colorful remains of oddly biomorphic monuments.

Maybe it is robot gravemarkers on a psychedelic future landscape. I just knew that I wanted every color to be represented, and I like the idea of these inhuman forms poised among rolling hills with just a touch of biological shapeliness. They teeter and totter like discarded children's toys but give the impression of something scattered along a quiet landscape. This is a 6 x 8 painting. I used to do much larger "alien landscape" paintings -- that was probably most of what I painted in the '90s, come to think of it.

"Night of the Firefly Squid" is another 6 x 8 that I had to sit down and paint immediately after seeing some pictures of the little bioluminescent critters recently. Glow in the dark animals (and plants, and rocks, and anything) have always been close to my heart since a childhood spend watching and catching fireflies. There is nothing quite as amazing as the variety of life in the ocean, and these bizarre alien lifeforms truly seem to come from another universe. I can't do anything but marvel at them. I realize that it all serves a purpose -- attracting food or as part of a mating ritual -- but it's a lot better than anything humans have come up with.

Finally in this week's grouping, "The Dark Procession" is another painting (8 x 10 this time) born of my omnipresent interest in pulp horror -- whether it's the covers of magazines like Weird Tales, or B-movie posters, I love the garish colors, and the grimaces of horror. I recently read "Phantom Perfumes," the Ash-Tree Press collection of stories from the Ghost Stories magazines of 1926-1930, which has a lot of covers of things like this.

It all links back to the gothic novels of the late 1700s through the early 1800s that I love so much. This painting is inspired in equal parts by books like Matthew Lewis' "The Monk," Ann Radcliffe's "The Italian; or the Confessional of the Black Penitents," and by Weird Tales style magazine covers; as well as my beloved 1960s and 1970s movie posters and images. Any time I put in a movie and it starts with a bunch of guys in hooded robes or capes carrying torches, candles or lanterns, I'm pretty much there.

So that's where I've been lately. Alien worlds, the deep ocean and gothic castles, as usual. Still working on some other topics too, some outer space, a couple of witchy storybook repaints, and perhaps some more nature-inspired art.

I also have six new 8 x 10 prints to list very soon, made from previously sold paintings or things I kept in my personal collection.

Gothic heroines in distress

One of the categories I've started on my Pinterest page is Gothic Romance Book Covers -- I've started just by scanning the ones that I have acquired myself, but these things are hard to come by, as every used book store I've visited in several time zones has said "No, we just don't have much call for those." I can't believe this incredible category of vintage novel has completely vanished from second-hand stores, except for the odd lot on eBay now and then.

I haven't even read any of the ones I've acquired yet (my tastes run more to the 19th century anyway, and these are more recent tales) but I actually like the sound of them and enjoy a good pulp novel, so I suspect I eventually will read at least some of them, for they seem steeped in Dark Shadowsy atmosphere of mystery, family secrets and hidden rooms. Although marketed as "romances" they have all of the key elements that I look for in my old-fashioned tales of terror.



Even before reading them, these covers have started to form some of the inspiration for a series of paintings I've been doing over the past year and change. I just love the image of ladies escaping from castles in nightgowns by moonlight. Sometimes it's a mansion, sometimes a castle, a burning tower, a mill, or a country cottage even. They are invariably wearing a long gown though and it is always night.


"The Peril of the Crimson Manor" was the first deliberate attempt I made to come up with a title for a gothic romance paperback that might or might not actually exist, and then design a cover showing a woman fleeing in the night from a building with mysteries lights in the windows. I think it's important that the protagonist have a light source like a torch, candle or lantern, whenever possible, or an artifact of some sort like an amulet. She has both!


"Terror on the Cliff" was the second painting, and although it can be difficult to capture the colors when there is a lot of white and pale grey in a painting, given my limited photographic experience, I think she scanned pretty well. Everyone needs a mist-shrouded cliff to loom over, right?

"Trouble at the Mill" sold in 2010 right after I listed it - I loved the image of a mill and the intimations of what horrors might lurk in the chamber of the mill stone. I guess movies like "The Mill of the Stone Women" (1963) must be an influence as well. There is something sinister about these structures which now mainly exist in ruins. (though there was one in New Jersey that housed a great German restaurant, for years, that I worked nearby for awhile...).



"Terror in the Crimson Castle" is a classic image from gothic horror, of course -- every single 1960s-ish film I watch seems to have a scene like this, though they are usually in black and white. I can't watch a movie without a candelabra, a diaphanous gown and a staircase (preferably spiral). Well, I can, but I always wind up back in the castle. And yes I used the word "crimson" in two of my five paintings here, but can you blame me?


"The Moonstone (I)" is thus titled because I intend to do several illustrations for some of my favorite books, such as -- well, The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. I have a bunch of J. Sheridan Le Fanu ideas as well. But I will get back to those, as I have a pile of other things to finish...


"Escape to Subterranean Horrors" is my newest painting in this line of inspiration -- after reading even more ghost stories (thank you, Ash Tree Press, for your affordable line of ebooks!), and watching even more gothic horror films (thank you, Mario Bava) I can't seem to get away from candelabras!

At any rate I'll continue with these for as long as I can think up variations on the theme. Since the contemporary idea of horror bears no resemblance to mine, with a few exceptions, I will just have to keep creating my own haunted atmosphere.