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.

Easter bunnies, spring flowers

"Alice's Tea Party"

I realized in looking through my listings that I don't have any art with bunnies in it for sale right now! Which is kind of insane, because they've always been a favorite topic for me to include in my paintings.

So I thought for Easter weekend I would include a little gallery here of some spring, Easter, egg and rabbit-themed art that I've done over the years. I seem to have a lot more cephalopods and badgers in recent years, but I still love bunnies, so I will look to maybe re-doing some of these or similar paintings in the future!

And yes, I think a jack o' lantern is appropriate even for the Easter time tea party you can see above in my favorite "tea party" painting!

As creatures of the moon, rabbits seem to go naturally with night themes, but also have a silence about them that adds a touch of serenity and surrealism to any piece of art. Although wild animals at heart they seem naturally domestic -- gentle, quiet, unobtrusive, in a strange place where they are at once symbolic of the wild natural world and the home hearth. Yet at the same time, isn't there something just terrifying about the Easter Bunny?

The images I've collected here were all painted before I had access to a scanner with a high enough resolution to make prints from the scans, and unfortunately they are all long since sold -- except "Rabbot" (the rabbit with rainbow wings) which I do have high resolution scans of, for print-making purposes.

I have some of these images in my little online art gallery, http://www.artbysarada.com, and as always I can repaint any image in any size, with any variations -- I would love to do some more colorful spring and summer art, when I'm not busy with my gothic castles!

And yes these are all copyright Sarada, etc., so please do not use the images without permission. :)

"April Shower"

The title for this one is lost to time but let's call it "Easter Egg Tree" for now!


This also I don't have a title for bit let's call it "Night in the Springtime"

And a third without a surviving title, that I may have just called "Easter Fairy" at the time.

Ah one more without a title! "Mistress of Spring" sounds good!

Detail of custom art I did for someone a few years ago

"Kingdom of Wings"

"Rabbot"

"Summer Garden"

Haunted Spring

My friends in the Halloween Artist Bazaar group on Etsy have some items tagged for spring, so please check it out -- if you like weird, cute and gothic Halloweeny things but need a little something springish at this time of year.

I tagged a couple of items like my ghost wielding flowers in a haunted hallway:




Or my Alice in Wonderland in the garden print:

Please remember that in my shop only (Art by Sarada) the coupon code TAXDAY will get you 15% off through the end of the day April 15 (or whenever I remember to take it down).

Happy April and Happy Spring!

Loch Ness Monster and coupon code!

I did this painting several weeks ago and neglected to post about it!

"Legend of the Lost Loch" is an original 8 x 10 acrylic painting on flat canvas board - another loosely inspired by my gothic novel covers, but I had to add in a sea serpent because, well, I haven't painted one in awhile. Actually I can only think of one other sea serpent I've painted in this "looking out of the water" kind of way, and I never offered it for sale -- I painted it directly from a dream.


But the real meat of this post is that I have a 15% off coupon code good for more than the next month -- I'll leave it up until the end of the day April 15th (probably longer, I am a night person and I'm not going to be sitting at the computer at exactly midnight with my finger on a button). This helps me remember that tax day is coming (whee) and it helps you if you want a little discount when you're looking to spend your refund! :)

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.

The haunted hands of Countess Regenbogen

It is a fairly well-known fact that I am rather fond of 1960s/1970s psychedelic horror movies. They don't have to be in color, but I like color a lot. And by "psychedelic" I really just mean weird and visually interesting. And mostly from Europe. And I love the movie posters, even if they have little or nothing to do with the movie. I just like how visually free and experimental they were -- the colors, the composition, the typefaces, all bear signature flourishes, with a little Art Nouveau, a little surrealism, some decadence, and a splash of je ne sais quoi. There's also a bit of garish comic book art and a good dose of pulp magazine or book cover.

I have always had a secret longing to do pulp book or magazine covers, but my style is a bit different...so I try to translate these things through my own little filter, and that's what I did with the painting above, ridiculously named for an imaginary pulp short story or low-budget film.

Some of my inspirations from the world of film are Jean Rollin, Czech fantasy films and Coffin Joe, which I'll show you below. I'm not exactly trying to recreate the movie poster aesthetic but I want to use similar elements, motifs and color schemes.

I've talked about Jean Rollin before, and he pretty much is what I have in mind when I throw around phrases like "psychedelic horror." People in masks, strange lighting, vampires walking out of clocks and fireplaces (Shiver of the Vampires), prog rock soundtracks to romps through night-lit graveyards, and wild costumes and colors. And candelabras, lots of candelabras.




This isn't a movie poster, above, but Coffin Joe (Zé do Caixão,) of Brazil also uses some wild and crazy visuals, most of which (like Rollin) aren't exactly safe for work. But the color scheme in this little graphic, and the hands, are the kind of thing that I had in the back of my mind with my little painting.


And perhaps most of all, one of the most perfect movies for my aesthetic, more of a surrealist fantasy film than a horror film, is Valerie and her Week of Wonders, or Valerie a týden divů, by Jaromil Jireš. This poster image, with that shade of green and the menacing, ominous figure in black, is something that creeps through whenever I think about painting a fantasy-horror image with a feeling of psychedelic menace. Which is something I think about a lot, believe me.

My favorite elements in film which have a tendency to also show up in paintings, are probably:

Contrasts of very colorful images against a very dark or bleak setting (a psychedelic gown in a dark castle).

Candles, candelabras, torches and lanterns.

Staircases, particularly circular ones.

Masks or painted faces.

Garish spot lighting in shades of red, green or sometimes blue and gold (Dario Argento, Mario Bava, et. al. do this very well)

Lushly decorated interiors infused with decay and decadence -- brocade wallpapers in dark green, red or purple; statuary, suits of armor, mirrors, gauzy draperies, etc.

Flowing diaphanous gowns, either in white or pale colors; also gauzy black drapings or robes.

Jean Rollin hits all of these notes, as do movies like "The Girl Slaves of Morgana le Fay" and many others. For black and white movies, the Italian gothics pretty much are what it's all about for me.

And then of course there are giallos but I'll save that for another day!

Incidentally if anyone reading this is on Pinterest I'm trying to start compiling some albums of interesting images there, including a board for my own paintings. Please feel free to follow and I'll do the same for you:

http://pinterest.com/artbysarada/

Halloween Artist Bazaar

I was recently invited to join the Halloween Artist Bazaar on Etsy, a new group devoted to all things Halloween. I love Etsy teams, and I am happy to be a part of several on there -- including the EtsyDarkTeam, TeamBPAL, and the VAST group (Visual Artists Street Team).

This new Halloween group was started by TwilightFaerie on Etsy, who has many vintage Halloween inspired items in her shop like this one:


Other members so far include:

Sauvage Raven Creations, which offers many altered art items, one-of-a-kind items with a gothic theme, including Halloween, Poe, and Dark Shadows:



And Evil Lily Originals, featuring many hand sewn items with skulls, bats and other trappings of the gothic Halloween aesthetic.:




Halloween art has been one of my main interests since I started painting -- the first paintings I did specifically to sell on eBay back around 2000 were all inspired by my love of vintage Halloween art, and before then I had been mostly painting fantasy and gothic imagery, and surreal or colorful abstract psychedelic paintings (from 1986 to 2000) in various forms. I have a pretty wide variety of art in my shop now, but there's still a high Halloween content -- and if you include anything gothic or ghost related in that, it's a whole lot more.

I know it's February, and we're just past Valentine's Day, but this is about the time of year that I started really actively selling Halloween art online about a dozen years ago, so it seems like a good time to start celebrating again this year! Here's one of my originals that I have tagged to be part of HAB:



And here is a print:



As this group grows you can just type "HAB" in a search field at Etsy to see a variety of works by the people in the group.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Poe toaster

Yesterday (Jan. 19) was Edgar Allan Poe's birthday and I noticed in the news that the legendary "Poe toaster" did not make an appearance in Baltimore. For decades, a mysterious figure has placed three roses on Poe's grave, made a toast and left a half empty bottle of cognac at the site on the great writer's birthday. This is the third year, according to news reports, that he did not show up. Perhaps it was because it was only meant to continue until Poe's 200th birthday (which was in 2009). The world may never know.

A lifelong fan of Poe myself, I can remember taking down our very, very old copies of his complete works from a shelf almost too high to reach, as a little girl, and reading "The Pit and the Pendulum." I don't know why, but that story really appealed to me. Maybe it was all those Saturday afternoons watching Hammer horror films and Vincent Price movies on Channel 48 with my dad, but I'm sure that we saw quite a few Poe adaptions over the years. At any rate, I always wind up going back to him, and there's nothing better than reading Poe on a dark and rainy night when the lights go out.

And as a general fan of mysterious figures and cemeteries, I am sorry to hear that there may not be any more Poe toasts of that nature. I painted my little tribute, above, to the humorous double meaning of the name, but it's meant with great love. I hear "Poe toaster" and, well, that's the first image that comes to mind (maybe it's since I don't drink, but love breakfast foods). I added in the three roses and half-empty bottle as a nod to the real toaster.

And really, wouldn't you want great horror writers' images on all of your kitchen appliances? A big nod to one of my friends who suggested a "Bram Stoker's spatula" or a "chopping Bloch" to continue that idea, though I haven't done any paintings in that vein yet. :)

Valentine Witches revisited

About 10 years ago, maybe nine, I did the painting above on 16 x 20 stretched canvas -- the photo above is not high res but you can tell what it looked like though the colors are muted because of the lighting. I really love that "winter sky" palette -- the pinkish cold tint as the sun sets, and all of the pastel ice cream shades that I associate with it. As much as I love dark and gothic colors, I also like these shades. And for some reason I really, really love "Candyland" images of heart and stripes all among the snow. So, whatever your thoughts are about Valentine's Day, that whole set of images really appeals to me.

And most of all it's an excuse to paint fancy dresses! My witch paintings are always little fantasies of dresses I want to wear. And yes I do wind up making a lot of dresses like that. Stripes and hearts -- and bustles, and bodices, oh my! I haven't made any like that in awhile since my size has been fluctuating the past couple of years but I will always have a strong longing to wear bustles, petticoats and bell sleeves.

For instance, this Simplicity Pattern for Alice in Wonderland and the Queen of Hearts really embodies what I want out of a dress! I have this pattern, so we'll see what happens.

Since I wanted to recapture this image now that I can get a high-res scan of it, I did a 9 x 12 version of the same approximate image. Now you can see how bold and bright the colors should be, though I had to cluster the main parts of the image in the middle. I also wanted to be able to make prints of the image so I wanted something easier to make into an 8 x 10.

This painting is available on Etsy right now.


The snowy season won't be around long though (and admittedly I am writing from a place where it was 73 degrees and I was out in short sleeves today) so my tube of white paint will get a break soon. Even though I was in no danger of seeing "the white stuff" this winter I can enjoy its aesthetic a lot more when I don't have to shovel it. But bare trees and blankets of white on the forest floor will always be beautiful!