Sometimes you fall. Sometimes your world turns to ashes around you. While the burning, the loss, and the pain of it kills part of you, it does not mean the end. Instead it just marks the turning point of the hero’s journey.
This means it is time to settle the past.
To leave ashes what must be let go. Do not dwell on them.
You can rise from the ruins of what was full of fire and new life.
“When everything is lost,
and all seems darkness,
then comes the new life
and all that is needed.”
~ Joseph Campbell
A phoenix captured in the moment of its rebirth, exploding into life.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. ~ Gautama Buddha
Inspired by an alternative concept of the Tree Ship in the Fountain. A mix of the Zen concepts explored in the movie with the proverbial Fountain of Youth.
A city of storms. Some say it is the palace of the King of Frost and the Keeper of the North Wind. Others say the Winter Queen spent the end of her days here. Whatever the truth is, it is a place lost to time and legend.
Inspired by the Frost King by Christ L’Etoile aka Stormwalz.
Fragile cities made of clouds. Inhabited by gaseous lifeforms for the gaseous terrain found in the upper layers of Saturn itself.
All the colors in this image were taken from one of the images released Cassini returned from Saturns Rings from the 2007/2008 era. These images spared discussion of what a native life form to Saturns clouds would create as a home.
“Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star. “ - T.S.Eliot
A reminder that even in times when the world seems ashes that there is often a solemn beauty to what remains… to what is true.
Somewhere in the South Pacific a dead god lies dreaming. An underwater corpse city of nightmares.
Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”
Clawing upwards, beyond what he has wrought below; Mankind rises once again; dreaming of the stars.
Inspired by the Tower of Babel and Warhammer 40k’s Hive Cities.
A slumbering city, long forgotten and eternally obscured, finally breaches the clouds.
A study in fractal isolation.
“All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.”
– Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation
A collaborative work with my wife. A mixing of of All Roads and Star’s End. Both tributes to Isaac Asimov, the first Science Fiction author I was exposed to.
What does Time look like from the point of view of those that traverse it non-linearly?
A matter of clocks and wheels, all in harmony, none showing the same time.
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton
– T.S. Eliot - Rhapsody on a Windy Night.
Inspired by a doodle given to me by a fellow artist and storyteller, and one of her favorite poets.
Creation holds it’s breath.
All is drawn in to a central, brilliant, point.
The universe does not start with a whimper.
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.” ~ Carl Sagan
The last, explosive, dying gasp of a star. All fire and fury, burning everything in it’s wake. An act leaving behind a lifeless husk of a solar system.
What if Hal’s sentience took it in a completely different direction. A more willing to assist instead of being burdened by paranoia.
There was an old book, I can’t recall it’s name. But it involved a species that was stealing matter form the core of other stars. This would eventually cause the star to collapse in on itself and supernova.
This was an attempt to visualize what that ‘remnant’ of a star might look like in the process of collapsing.
A star on the edge of formation, it’s core becoming denser and hotter. A white hot torch in the epicenter; the spark of creation.
The partner piece to Aftermath. Reference: NGC 6751
The moment after confluence.
A star’s first breath.
Ignition point.
A young girl who played a Warlock in a certain MMO decided to make a bet with me. She asked for a fractal that could be her character’s summoning circle. And she wanted it in pink, because her mother hates pink.
“We shall remember the things we held in our hands
That slipped out.
What I have in my possession and what I do not have in my possession.“
– Yehuda Amichai - And We Shall Not Get Excited (translation)
There were good intentions when this piece started.
Drawing the eyes ever deeper into the spiral. The net of voice pulling one closer to the center where the abyss stares back.
Things of madness often have an abundance of eyes… or eyes within eyes. Yet oft times they are not eyes at all.
A companion to Nine Eyes. This is the full fractal as was requested.
“There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column”
~ T.S. Eliot
A conduit to a constructed fantastical land.
Perhaps we need to become Alice once in a while?
“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams.” ~ T.S. Eliot
Loosely inspired by my fiancee’s obsession with a certain anime series at the time.
An attempt at recreating the feel of those old screensavers at the moments the wandering lines intersected, or perhaps the old line art trick of making curves with straight lines plotting points along axis of a graph.
Somethings slumbering in the depths, waiting for the right conditions to hatch. Alive but unborn. Waiting, watching….
Perhaps some challenge between alpha predators on the surface will give them cause to leave the nests?
Inspired in part by the Muto eggs in the 2016 Godzilla movie, but with a more Cthulhu-esque bend.
Silken layers of cobwebs. Obscuring things long forgotten; things lost to time.
A part of a series with Piercing the Veil and Radiance. One of a five part project for my siblings.
“Life is a journey; weather traveled by foot, by wings of magic, or only in the mind, the voyager must always move forward. To stand still is to be lost.
Or to be forgotten.
I am unsure which is worse. “
– Ariq al-Binara of Frostfell
The full version of Piercing the Vale.
This and Piercing the Vale have been a personal project of mine. This piece has been split up into four quarters, one for each of the family siblings.
A combined version, a mothers day gift. Something to connect the families even though we’re all scattered to diferent places.
Here’s looking at you kid. ~ Humphrey Bogart
Experimenting with a flipped disc style of fractal flame. This brought to mind the old ‘pipe dream’ windows game from back in the 3.1 era.
A variation of Iris caused by a typo. Looked too nifty not to keep around.
A study in separating part of a fractal and a study in three sets of three.
A requested piece in three parts….
- A piece with religious symbolism.
- A piece with a celtic knot.
- A piece with a triangle.
The trinity knot formed by mathematical expression.
“Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation.”
~ Meditations - Marcus Aurelius