The Bounded Infinite
Pencils for the next Tarot card
(Pencil on Paper)
A number of years ago (6 now? …man… 7?), I had the privilege to work on a Tarot deck that was completed in memoriam for another tattoo artist, Mo Richard, who had started a deck but had died before its completion. Mo had planned the multi-stabber deck far ahead of time, so the organizers of the deck sent out guidelines along with our card assignments, to match our work to Mo’s original vision.
My card was the Four of Swords. I had to incorporate a chrysalis into my image, but I didn’t know enough about Tarot then to know why. I completed my card shortly after my sister died, and I know that because I do not remember completing the card at all. I only know that one of the organizers, Joe Rheault, very patiently asked for my image, which was late in arriving. Bless Joe for his kindness; I think about it often. I doubt he even knew that my sister had just died, he’s just a really great goddamn human.
Now that I’m working on my own deck, and I’ve made it to the fours, it seems necessary to include the chrysalis again. It was perfect the first time (thanks to Mo, not me), and seems everlastingly fitting.
Three of Wands
The threes! Complete!
(Ink on Paper; see more in the Tarot Gallery)
Throughout these early cards, I keep singing Peter Gabriel’s Growing Up to myself (“three dot; a trinity, a way to map the universe; three dot”). After the fours (“four dot; is what will make a square, a bed to build on, it’s all there; four dot”), I’ll need a different soundtrack to roll through my head alongside all the other perpetual sounds (“my ghost likes to travel, so far in the unknown…”)
One Wand of Many
A brief glimpse of a wand while I determine if there should be creatures in this drawing.
(Ink on Paper; WiP detail)
Scary Dog Privilege
Or: How the Bert Became the Service Dog He Never Wanted to Be.
(Digital)
In the last couple years I've had some seriously wonky blood pressure problems.
Which I consider extremely rude of my body to perpetrate, considering I gave up smoking and all other nicotine and then my BP went ballistic.
Who knows, maybe I was cursed.
The point is that, between the BP meds to make sure I don’t fucking explode, being middle-aged with ovaries, and having anxiety so severe I have to take an SSRI so I don't start screaming in terror when I buy groceries, I sometimes don't handle the heat as well as I would like.
Sometimes, my BP meds suddenly start working really well, and I nearly pass out.
This always happens when I’m out walking the Bert and almost always happens when we are at a distant park, a mile or so from the car. I told my doctor about it, and she asked what I do when it happens.
“I can’t stay upright, so I lie down on the ground until it passes.”
“That sounds frightening. Aren’t you… worried? To just lie down alone in a park?”
“Um… would you like to see a picture of the dog I’m walking?”
The Bert is an amiable dog. He’s also generally aloof. But he does not like it when people he does not know get too close to me and he reaaaaaalllly doesn’t like it when I’m upset. He once scared the holy bejeezus out of some poor man who made the mistake of coming around his own car too quickly in the dark. His sudden appearance made me jump, which made the Bert drop his head and snarl like a wolf.
He doesn’t usually menace strangers, but when I'm having a nice lil lie down alongside a path, he stares at them as they go by, until they’re out of sight.
Would I like to stop nearly losing consciousness in public? Absolutely! (Luckily that SSRI means I’m not terribly anxious about actually blacking out) Do I worry that lying down in any given park is a danger to my health? Fuck no. There are very few things the Bert feels as passionately about as a nice, long walk, but he'll always look out for me. Even if he's doing it just a tad begrudgingly by the end.
The Whip in the WiPs
(Ink and Pencil on Paper)
WiPs = obsession. The make mode is on, relentless push of creation, and it takes concerted effort to stop, brush my teeth, go to bed.
I was so much worse before I had a dog. At least now there’s a routine that dampens the obsession a bit.
Down Here With All These Corpses
From a dream.
(Digital)
Caused either by watching the LOTR extended editions and really paying close attention to the dead marshes or by terrible seasonal allergies that mean I can’t fucking breathe when I’m sleeping. Maybe both.
Inertial Alchemy
Beginning work on the three of pentacles.
(Pen and Pencil on Paper; Digital Color Enhancement)
The Three of Cups
(Ink on Paper; see more in the Tarot Gallery)
Even though I wanted to take the cups out of their hands, I couldn't resist the iconography of the three graces. They’re up there with the rape of the sabines as one of the most copied and recopied ad infinitum subjects in art history.
Sometimes I remember, like really remember in my sinews, that I’m an art historian. Like when I start thinking about the three graces and then I get really upset about Savonarola burning high Renaissance art in Florence. Botticelli was said to have burned his own paintings in one of the biggest bonfires of this iconoclastic rampage, but there really isn’t proof for that (the claims came from later dates and no contemporary supports exist).
More and more, I understand myself as an antitraditionalist. Not in the way that makes me want to eschew the thread of artistry that weaves in and out of all incarnations of the three graces, but in the way that I’d like to take a baseball bat to every jackass who’s ever wanted to burn anything beautiful for its inherent sin.
…In the end, Savonarola was hanged and burned, which was fitting. May that be the final radiance that finds all repressive and hateful hearts.