Have I mentioned how much I love Deviantart? It has thrown open so many doors for the sharing of wild, unprisoned, sometimes young imaginations. I find myself addicted to browsing there for mythical images and outbursts of ideas in color and pencil and photo. Here are a few that have recently caught my eye, and that I wanted to share - if you like them, please take a look at the artists' other work.
The first (above) is by the artist known on Deviantart as xlagartixax, and depicts the "selkelions," the artist's inspired tinkering with the selkies of Irish folklore. One of the fans on Deviantart quite rightly commented in admiration that this looks like an illustration in a children's book. It does! It makes me think of the wild beasts I concocted when I was eight. I miss those creatures! The winged tarns that would hunt my brother and I as we ducked between trees in the woods behind the pasture, or the otter-dolphin creature, the binen that would dash underwater down the creek faster than sound or sight. I love what this picture captures.
The other two here are from tavari's work, one an Artemis and the other an Emerging Deva. It was easy for me to say what I liked about the sea cats: they remind me of the buoyant inventiveness of childhood and the always nearness of wonder. It is more difficult for me to describe in words what I love about tavari: I am no art critic. But I post these here because I think them very worth sharing. This Artemis is not the sweating, racing through dark trees under moon, bowstring taut, vengeful and furious-at-Actaeon Artemis that I would imagine, yet in her calm and in the lightest halo about her outline, there is something indeed goddess-like, and the picture calms the soul. In Emerging Deva there is light, apotheosis, and maybe the same breathlessness Botticelli had in painting The Birth of Venus, and oh, the glorious color of those wings! Presumptuous, I have asked God many times in my prayers if it was not a terrible oversight that we homo sapiens were not created with wings. He has not seen fit to gift me with any yet. But I look at this painting and I am at once filled with mindshaking awe at its light and its glow and its poise, and at the same instant with an envy that runs deep. Tavari is worth watching.
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3 comments:
some great artwork on the website, to be sure...however, I inadvertently stumbled on a poem which the "author" had plagiarized from a Victorian writer, and when confronted with the proof, he insisted he wrote it, again and again.
Hi Peg,
Do you mean an author that we have featured here on the blog? I wasn't sure what you meant, as your comment responds to a review of artwork rather than a post about a poem. You have certainly made a very serious claim. What author do you mean? If you have uncovered something we ought to know about, please drop us a note at editors@dantesheart.com.
Daniel
Editor, Dante's Heart
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