a curation by speculative mystery author Rick Wayne
Italian company Studio Peregalli, specialize in old European style. Appropriately, their website is a single static page. If you want to hire them, you have to call or visit. http://www.studioperegalli.it/ It's cold here. Pull up a book. Now, then, I was again happy: I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum per day: and what... Continue Reading →
Ignacio Cobo is an artist from Santiago, Chile who uses digital collage to make novel tarot cards out of old art. His "deck" eschews traditional major/minor arcana in favor of loose associative representations and a simple numbering system, which I think gets to the symbolic heart of the system. Find more here and here.
Contemporary artist Theo Vandor has painstakingly removed the figures from Jan Van Eyck's 1434 masterpiece, commonly known as "The Arnolfini Portrait," which depicts a wealthy Italian merchant and his (eventual) wife in their home. Painted on an oak panel, it is widely considered one of the most mysterious works in the Western canon. Contrary to... Continue Reading →
Alexandr Komarov, AKA Ghostbow, is a digital painter from Ukraine who makes classic, high fantasy paintings elves, dwarves, dragons, adventurers, and deep forest gods. You can find more by the artist on his DeviantArt page.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was a Dutch-born British artist who became one of the wealthiest painters of the 19th century. A talented marketer as well as painter, he anglicized his name from Laurens to Lawrence so he could be better remembered in the English-speaking world. He also added the forename Alma so that he would appear... Continue Reading →
Mike Mahle's mixes classic art deco illustration with the solid colors of contemporary animation, often depicting, as he calls it, "sirens and superheroes," but also quite a few classic book covers. Check it out.
Holyday (1876) by James Tissot. "Autumn is coming, the leaves of the large chestnut tree are changing color, but the rest of the vegetation is still green and luxurious. On the right is the painter's wife, Kathleen Newton, who appears to avert her eyes from the scene. The men in the painting belong to the... Continue Reading →
Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse's "The Death of Messalina" (1916) is one of those paintings you really need to see in person to appreciate. Your eyes need to be able to focus on the various components separately -- the anger of the soldier as he grips her hair, the patrician's douchebro smirk as he grips the execution order,... Continue Reading →
Ereshkigal , Sumerian goddess of the underworld, was also called Irkalla, the name of her land, in the same way that in the Greek, Hades is both the name of the realm and its king. Compare to Hela in the Norse pantheon or Persephone or Hecate in the Greek. Ereshkigal was the older sister of... Continue Reading →
