Sci fi surrealism, rust monsters, and a few more unicorns.

Aside from working on a lot of oil paintings recently, and waiting for them to dry, I have a sort of unthemed mixed bag of things to share for the moment.

 Earlier this month I contributed a piece, "The Sea Corridor," for a greyscale art contest at Jerry's Artarama in Houston. I got a nice set of oil paints for my efforts, and the painting (18 x 24 inch on a gallery wrapped canvas) is taking up a big chunk of art closet real estate here now, in case anyone within driving distance of Houston is interested in making an offer on it. :) Blurry photo with glare courtesy of my perpetually poor lighting conditions and lack of a professional grade photo studio.

The "fish-owl" was inspired by a couple of lines in the book "Babylon" by Rene Crevel, and there are tiny little fishes budding off of the branches that were inspired by lines in "The Goose of Hermogenes" by Ithell Colquhoun, unless I'm getting my surrealist novels confused. I tried to put some of my favorite elements in this -- woods, corridors full of billowing curtains, gliding down a passageway like the famous scene in Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"...just some things that I like, blended into a sort of collage.

I also have prints available of a colorful, surrealist-inspired painting I did a few years ago and kept in my personal collection. This is a 5 x 7 print for sale but I can also make 8 x 10 (or 9 x 12, even) on request.

"Beneath the Green Sky"

"The Lair of the Rust Monster"

On a completely different note, I'm slipping an 8 x 10 print of another of my "personal stash" paintings into the mix this week -- I love D&D module covers from the early 80s, which was my formative era. I liked the art more than anything else really, since I rarely got to play with other people. In fact, check back for a post about those soon. 

"The Shadow and the Candle"

Back to surrealism, this oil painting is also in my personal stash, just a stream-of-consciousness piece I did, of whatever came to mind at the moment that I wanted to see. Subconsciously inspired by my love of Leonora Carrington, in ways I can't quite put my finger on. I'm keeping the original of this, but 5 x 7 prints are available at the link above, and 8 x 10 can also be made on request.

Finally, I have prints up now of a couple of the unicorn paintings that I did last week.

"Beneath the Purple Unicorn Tree" 5 x 7 print

"Groovy Unicorn Room" 5 x 7 print

And soomehow when Easter rolled around I think I neglected to post this picture, that I did for the season. But really, aren't moonlit bunnies suitable year-round?

Thanks for looking, and I hope that my next update will be a little more focused, but really, what's so great about focus?

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.

New art and old but new

I have been meaning for awhile to do some more paintings inspired by '60s science fiction book covers, science textbooks and the like - I love that retro look for "sciency" things that especially in science fiction is only based on the most loose and psychedelic misunderstanding of how "sciency" things work.

I don't know how many I will do but here is the first in the latest batch, it's called "Drifting through the cellular sea" and is available on Etsy.

I have also done a repaint of one of my most popular designs. First painted in 2001 or 2002, I'm not sure which, "Black Lantern Spell" is an image I have done several times, including one large painting that was about three by four feet in size. This time the painting is 9 x 12 inches, suitable for easy framing on flat canvas board.

I'm always willing to do repaints of images that are in my gallery at http://www.artbysarada.com in a variety of sizes at set prices, but here's one that is all done and ready to go. I hope that from my new repaints I may also be able to offer prints, since the original 2002 designs were done at a time that I did not have access to the resources to do so.

That's all for now - lots more to come soon.

Winter blues

Still have a few posts backed up that I need to make! I have been busy though and need to catch up a little...with the coming of winter I get really into blue colors. The painting on top is another in my series of surreal alien landscape paintings, mainly with ice/water themes. I always have figures without facial features in these, though I usually leave the gender ambiguous and I think this one is more clearly female.

Speaking of water, the painting below might look at first like waves or hills in a watery background. But it is actually meant to represent a reclining female form -- and the secret symbolism here is that this is how i feel when I'm trying to get out of bed in the morning...forever drawn back into the watery depths of sleep.

This brief post brought to you by my realization that it's Sunday night and I won't have time to make one for awhile!

At the edge of the universe...

I have a post about books in the works and some more features to do on artists whose work I enjoy...but first a little something from the vaults. I did this painting two years ago (I thought it was one year ago but then I remembered that 2007 also existed) basically for myself but I'm kind of knee-deep in art around here so I put it up on Etsy today, as I flail around looking for attention.

"The Black Tower at the Edge of the Universe" brings together a lot of things that I love -- a glistening dark tower carved from onyx or ebony, rising from a precipice that falls off onto a chaotic cosmic swirl, with a rainbow waterfall cascading into the abyss. Psychedelic streams of color and a dark, apocalyptic theme in an impossible world. Anyway, that's what I'm into!

Meanwhile I experimented with putting a "Retweet" button at the top of the page and just putting one post on each page, to keep things neat and tidy. I'm very much in the learning process here of how to use Blogger so any advice or tips are always appreciated, if something isn't working or looks confusing or cluttered. I mean, the entire internet looks cluttered, really, these days. I'm leaving the pumpkin background for now, I'm always all about the pumpkins!

Space girl, and featured artists

First a little show and tell -- I really have too many paintings in my apartment so I have put space girl up for sale! She combines my love of 1950s/60s sci fi pulp novel book covers and movies from that era. eta: aaaaand, she sold already! :) But I have some more sci fi inspired art in the wings that I need to scan. :)

It's thunderstorming right now so I'll make this quick! I will be featuring some pen and ink artists in the next few days, since it is a medium I love to admire but don't do much of myself. In the meantime I am going to take advantage of the October thunderstorm to finish up reading some Edith Nesbitt ghost stories, because apparently I can just NEVER get enough ghost stories...