Visual Art
Illustration
"Harbingerofdoom, Down!" This was an acrylic painting for a book, A Welsh Alphabet, with 25 other artists and for a show in Los Angeles to launch publication by A Raven Above Press.
The book is an alphabet poem by Lorin Morgan-Richards, with a mythological creature or person from Wales for each letter of the alphabet assigned to an artist. I got 'G' for 'G ar gyfer Gwyllgi' - the gwyllgi is "a mythical dog" from Wales that appears as "a frightful apparition of a mastiff with baleful breath and blazing red eyes... often referred to as 'The Dog of Darkness' or 'The Black Hound of Destiny, the apparition's favourite haunt being lonely roads at night" the sight of which heralds the death of the person who comes on it on the road." (Wiki)
More than one culture has this black dog of death story and I found that kind of annoying on thinking about it, because every living thing's going to die. There's nothing unusual or unnatural or special about death, it's built right in. You don't need any kind of supernatural event to tell you that.
I sketched some others and I'm thinking a series: the big, black ungainly Great Dane of Death at the crossroads at night, seen through the windshield of a car, airborne; the little, fluffy Lhasa Apso of Death on a leash with an elderly couple waiting to cross the street in rainy, downtown Tokyo; the Chihuahua of Death on the couch with its elderly mistress watching something, etc. For Lorin's project, I settled on the playful, happy Corgi of Death with a tennis ball in the sunshine.
"Robin Goch" (Red Robin) This was a watercolor for another book, The Children's Voice: A Definitive Collection of Welsh Nursery Rhymes, also with a large group of other artists and also for A Raven Above Press.
