Elmer Paisley:

abstract paisley, acrylic on canvas, 2012

elmerpaisley.tumblr.com

“Nature in Balance” (acrylic and colored pencil on board, 2012): My representation of Erda, the primordial earth mother (from Wagner’s “Ring” cycle). She pops ominously out of the ground from time to time and sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlpYIE5mN4s

Above are her daughters, the three Fates who weave the Rope of Destiny on the World Tree. Beneath is the Rhinegold, bringing light to the depths under the river Rhine.

Erda:

“While Nathaniel composed this poem, he was very calm and collected; he polished and improved every line, and having subjected himself to the fetters of metre, he did not rest till all was correct and melodious. When at last he had finished and read the poem aloud to himself, a wild horror seized him.” from “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Collage. For Greta Cawley. This was so much fun to do

Stained glass window depicting Death. At one point, this was a large part of the composition of my portrait of Elmer, but I ended up deciding against it and painting over it. I’m glad I changed my mind about it, but I really should have kept this and finished it on its own.

Illustration for a calendar. The assignment was to include a fox and illustrate the word “solves”. His name is Detective Dudley Schemmel.

Riddle Bones

Pen and ink

Eliza spent most of the day in tearful contemplation of a dying flower. :’(

Acrylic and colored pencil (detail)

Dedicated with love to Katie Begany (Sorry about that shadow cutting diagonally across the middle…oops!)

“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. Watercolor and colored pencil.

My favourite book! I tried to capture the sweeping melodrama of it all.

Side note: Months later I realized that I unconsciously ripped the composition off from “Gone with the Wind” 

“Bluebeard” by Charles Perrault: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault03.html

I’d like to do something with this someday. I like the idea of having him more as a refined Vincent Price type of madman, rather than just a barbarian of some sort. Also, he’d look great in the character’s traditional turban (a very large very round one) with this design.

Eleanora used to be young and beautiful, but that was so many years ago…

For my dear Anna Tararova. Acrylic and colored pencil (detail)

Prelude to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”. Acrylic and colored pencil.

  “I was spell-bound on the spot. At the risk of being discovered, and, as I well enough knew, of being severely punished, I remained as I was, with my head thrust through the curtains listening. My father received Coppelius in a ceremonious manner. “Come, to work!” cried the latter, in a hoarse snarling voice, throwing off his coat. Gloomily and silently my father took off his dressing-gown, and both put on long black smock-frocks. Where they took them from I forgot to notice. Father opened the folding-doors of a cupboard in the wall; but I saw that what I had so long taken to be a cupboard was really a dark recess, in which was a little hearth. Coppelius approached it, and a blue flame crackled upwards from it. Round about were all kinds of strange utensils. Good God! as my old father bent down over the fire how different he looked! His gentle and venerable features seemed to be drawn up by some dreadful convulsive pain into an ugly, repulsive Satanic mask. He looked like Coppelius. Coppelius plied the red-hot tongs and drew bright glowing masses out of the thick smoke and began assiduously to hammer them. I fancied that there were men’s faces visible round about, but without eyes, having ghastly deep black holes where the eyes should have been. “Eyes here! Eyes here!” cried Coppelius, in a hollow sepulchral voice. My blood ran cold with horror; I screamed and tumbled out of my hiding-place into the floor. Coppelius immediately seized upon me. “You little brute! You little brute!” he bleated, grinding his teeth. Then, snatching me up, he threw me on the hearth, so that the flames began to singe my hair. “Now we’ve got eyes — eyes — a beautiful pair of children’s eyes,” he whispered, and, thrusting his hands into the flames he took out some red-hot grains and was about to strew t~em into my eyes. Then my father clasped his hands and entreated him, saying, “Master, master, let my Nathanael keep his eyes — oh! do let him keep them.” Coppelius laughed shrilly and replied, “Well then, the boy may keep his eyes and whine and pule his way through the world; but we will now at any rate observe the mechanism of the hand and the foot.” And therewith he roughly laid hold upon me, so that my joints cracked, and twisted my hands and my feet, pulling them now this way, and now that, “That’s not quite right altogether! It’s better as it was! — the old fellow knew what he was about.” Thus lisped and hissed Coppelius; but all around me grew black and dark; a sudden convulsive pain shot through all my nerves and bones I knew nothing more.”-Hoffmann