This one's from 2004. I feel sure I've posted it before on the By-Product, but I can't find it here, and if I can't find it, neither can you. It was a commission by an old family friend of my parents. He wanted me to illustrate one of his favorite quotes, from writer Henry Miller. The quote text had to be incorporated into the picture. It appears in a banner across the top of this fantasy architecture scene in the style of M.C. Escher. The quote read:
“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of
looking at things.”
Well, I did the picture and duly incorporated this piece of twaddle into the top of the image on a banner. My destinations are always places, and you drink wine there, not have your perception adjusted, except of course by the wine. I hated having to put this banal sentiment into a rather cool piece of art, so once I had delivered the entire thing to the client, I took the scan I had made of it and deleted the quote in Photoshop. Now the picture looked just fine, complete with impossible staircase and mystic astrolabe. If you clikonthepic to look closer, you will see the carved image of a dentist at work, on the pillar holding the astrolabe. That's because the client who commissioned it was a dentist. The original title of the picture, which I didn't reveal to the client, was "Miller time," after the old beer ad.
"Miller Time" is ink, watercolor, and acrylic on illustration board, 9" x 14 1/2", October 2004.
2 comments:
I love this, and it reminds me of the picture I just sent you (could that be why you just posted this). I had never seen this before and I think it is one of your best in many way.
I believe that I've seen art of yours along a similar vein, surreal staircases. Much enjoyed. I enjoy seeing surrealist pieces and looking at how an artist chooses to distort reality. There is something about a staircase that makes it a perfect subject for surrealism, I think. The twisting of a spiral staircase, how it ascends.
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