Sallow Mushroom Elder

Sallow Mushroom Elder

Like many of my finished pieces, this one began as a doodle using the supplies I had available at the time. Initially I did not have a subject matter in mind and was simply laying down some interesting forms and lines with the highlighter marker. The central portion of those forms became a wizened face, and the swirling area surrounding it was first a shroud, then hair, and finally an equally wizened tree. Due to the worn nature of the face and hands, the fungi, as well as the yellow tone of the marker, I tentatively titled this piece "Sallow Mushroom Elder." At that point in time it was still incomplete and I wasn't sure who this imposing figure was, I also had no idea if this figure was male or female.

Around the same time period I really began trying to investigate Teutonic faerylore. Resources on Celtic faerylore abound (there are some that seem to believe that the Celts have a sort of cultural monopoly on faeries, but this is definitely not the case), but I am also interested in learning about the creatures my ancestors may have recognized and honored. The Irish have been known to reroute new highways around trees and hedges sacred to the fae, Icelanders have been known to do likewise with stones sacred to the fae. The religions of the Germanic ruling classes have come down to us more preserved in the form of Eddas and Sagas than the beliefs and practices of commoners, but even in those we find the Light Elves residing in Alfheim and Dark Elves who reside in Svartálfaheim. Beyond the more "official" mythology, there is also strong faery presence in Teutonic folklore.

One faery of folklore that caught my attention was the Hylde-Moer ("Elder Mother") or Hylde-Vinde ("Elder Queen"), who is the guardian spirit of a certain tree, the Sambucus nigra. It was customary to request permission from this spirit before taking any of her wood. She required a compact of sorts before someone took the task of cutting her tree: "Ourd gal, give me of thy wood / An Oi will give some of moine / when Oi grows inter a tree" and "Lady Elder, give me some of thy wood; then I will give thee, also, some of mine when it grows in the forest" are variations on that promise. In some cases, this tree was regarded as a witch in plant form.

Size: 5.5" by 6.75"
Media: black ballpoint pen, highlighter marker

EverGreen: Baby and the Faerie Queene

EverGreen: Baby and the Faerie Queene is a piece dedicated to my late cat Baby, who my mother and I found deceased on the side of the road in front of my home on Friday, October 13th of 2006, presumably the victim of a passing car. I have lost pets before, but not in such an untimely manner. Our other pets were old and obviously suffering, for them death was a quiet release. For Baby it seemed too soon and we were not there to ease his transition. We discovered him already stiff and cold. We had adopted him as an adult cat from one of my mother's coworkers who was moving and could not bring him with her, but he fit in perfectly with our already multiple-pet household. He was there to greet me when I went to school or work and he was there to welcome me back when I returned.

I was not angry at Death for taking him, I was just deeply sad and it was almost incomprehensible to me to realize that the only contact I would have with him from that point on would be relegated to dreams, visions, and memories.

This piece is such a vision - my vision of Baby's transition to the Otherworld. He is welcomed by the Mistress of the Wild Hunt for souls Herself, the Faerie Queene. They share milk from an earthenware chalice. The milk is significant in two main aspects: firstly, Baby was a stereotypical feline in that he adored drinking milk, and secondly, milk and/or cream are traditional offerings left for the fae, especially as payment for the household spirits who often perform domestic chores on the property. Baby performed his share of domestic duties by being a diligent mouse- and mole-catcher. The chalice itself is directly inspired by the goblet in Victorian faery artist Richard Dadd's 1862 painting Bacchanalian Scene. In Dadd's piece it also is adorned with a Death's head motif, but there is also a verse in Latin inscribed upon it. On the reverse of his painting is a legible version of the same phrase which translated means "Each man then has his own unlucky fate both here and beyond - like must be added to like and one's due paid to the appointed spirit." The winged Death's head in my version though is drawn from American gravestone art.

The Faerie Queene is Herself a blending of the western and northern European traditions from which She hails and physical features which link her to the soil in which Baby was actually laid to rest. I believe that Faery is deeply tied to the Land, it may perhaps be regarded as the Land's dreaming heart. I also believe that the spiritual creatures, much like their material counterparts in plants and animals, endemic to a certain landscape reflect its uniqueness. Therefore, I don't necessarily think that the Faerie Queene in the south-eastern woodlands of Pennsylvania may appear exactly as She does in the forests of Germany or in the English countryside.

In traditional fairylore the realm of the dead and the ancestors was associated and in some cases perceived to by synonymous with the Faery world. Early accounts even go so far as to link the Faery Queen and King with the rulers of the classical Underworld, Proserpina and Pluto. The faeries themselves were said to especially haunt ancient barrows and tombs, and human visitors to Elfhame often reported seeing their deceased friends and relatives among the inhabitants of the Otherworld.

The title "EverGreen" is both a hopeful metaphor for the life beyond this life and a reference to the main sylvan component in this piece, Taxus baccata otherwise known as the Yew tree. Since it produces small, red, cup-like fruits known as arils and does not yield resin, it is technically not a coniferous tree, but it is evergreen and possesses needles rather than leaves. Yews are among the longest-lived trees on earth, yet they also grow at a very slow rate. The Norse commemorated the Yew as the 13th rune in the Elder Futhark, "eiwaz" and regarded it as a symbol of of the related nature of death and rebirth. Due to such associations, Yews are to be found planted at gravesites. While Christian churches often sit beside these cemeteries, the Yews themselves often greatly predate the construction of those buildings.

Size: approximately 11" in width x 12" in height
Media: Prismacolor colored pencils, watercolor, acrylic, sumi-e ink

My Art is being featured at the Endicott Studio blog!

I am thrilled beyond belief!
I commented on an entry at the Endicott Studio blog yesterday regarding a poem about a DeerWoman and included links to two of my DeerWoman-based pieces. To my immense delight delight and honor, Terri Windling chose to highlight both of those images and my artwork in general in today's blog entry! You can read the entry yourself if you like: November 13, 2006.

If there ever was an occasion that warranted a "Squeakers of joy!" this is certainly it!

The White Doe of Nara

In many ways, my piece entitled DeerWoman was an artistic turning point for me. Although I have been creating images of deerwomen since early childhood, that particular work signaled something significant for me; reactions from both within and without indicated that I should follow that path beyond the tapestry of hunters deeper into the forest. In a sense the White Doe of Nara, created about three years after DeerWoman, is both a kind of commemoration and a futher exploration on the mythology and theme of my beloved DeerWoman. Yet the White Doe is not just a reinterpretation of the same figure in a different cultural context, in fact, the White Doe's character and tale is nearly a direct compliment to that of DeerWoman's.

Where DeerWoman is tragic, perhaps a victim or perhaps a reluctant but mythically necessary sacrifice, the White Doe is a figure with power. While destiny is something DeerWoman succumbs to, the White Doe has a direct hand in weaving it. DeerWoman avoids the viewer's gaze, the White Doe commands it. I feel that the compositional appearance of the landscapes in both images is significant also; DeerWoman is poised at a threshold between worlds, but the White Doe is the threshold, a manifestation of it as well as a gatekeeper of sorts. Unlike the melancholy DeerWoman, the White Doe sprouts antler spikes - she has a means of defense (or offense!). And, of course, there is the rather obvious distinction in cultural context. A Western European influence is prevalent in DeerWoman, but there is a pan-Asian inspiration for this piece.

My main cultural influence for this painting, revealed in its very title, is from Japan. I have long been captivated by Ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints, particularly by the Bijin-ga genre prints of Kitagawa Utamaro. In fact, the background texture and partially revealed hand of the figure in my piece were very much inspired by similar techniques used by him in a circa 1793 print entitled "Infrequent Love." In addition to my usual methods utilizing colored pencil and watercolor, I also experimented with other techniques literally involving processes of printing and stamping. I really wanted to combine my love of the gorgeous graphic quality of Ukiyo-e with my propensity for illustrating portraits in subtle gradations of color and shadow. The aforementioned processes, which I have never used in combination with my colored pencil technique, also allowed me to incorporate a stronger element of chance and randomness into the overall composition. When I work with colored pencil and watercolor, my method is very deliberate, direct, and controlled, however, these other processes were more indirect and much less predictable.

In addition to the aesthetic Japanese connection, there is also a mythological one. Within Japan's indigenous religion of Shinto, Sika deer (Cervus nippon) are regarded as sacred messengers of the Gods. In a particular region of Japan known as Nara in which the Kasuga Shrine is situated, it has been forbidden to hunt the deer for centuries. Deprived of the fear of immediate death at the hands of humans, the deer in Nara Park have become rather tame, freely approaching visitors seeking food and roaming the countryside without care. Legend tells that when the God Takemikazuchi-no-Mikoto first arrived to inhabit the shrine, he traveled on the back of a white deer. Deer also have a strong ties to Buddhism, another major religion in Japan. Siddharta Gautama's first sermon occured in Deer Park in Sarnath, and as this sermon set the Buddhist Wheel of Law into motion, deer are often depicted next to the symbolic representation of the Wheel.

While the Japanese influence is certainly the most prominent, I was also inspired by the art of other regions of Asia. For instance, the landscape depicted within the White Doe's kimono was inspired by Chinese screens and ink-wash paintings. White deer are also associated with divine figures in China as well; there is a painting in the Field Museum in Chicago depicting the Chinese Goddess Ma-Ku with a white hart. The White Doe's central hair ornament is a homage to a piece of Balinese metalwork which was once an earring for a large sculpture. The motif is traditional, but I have modified it somewhat for this image.

Original size: 8.5" by 11"
Media: prismacolor colored pencils, acrylic, watercolor, sumi-e ink, etc.
(This entry is backdated to reflect the date I originally uploaded it to my deviantARt gallery, but I added this piece to this journal on 2/14/07)

Sympathies

"I'm often called a 'fantasy' painter," Brian notes, "but my imagery springs from myth, folklore and the old oral story–telling tradition, not from the modern fantasy genre — although I'm grateful for the support that fantasy readers have given me over the years. I have to confess that, unlike Wendy, I rarely read fiction at all. Most of my reading is nonfiction: history, mythology, archetypal psychology and the like. I prefer the enchantment of a story told rather than one that is written down. In the oral tradition, where stories are told around the fireplace in semi–darkness, the words are alive: they leave the lips, enter into the air and before they fall onto your ear they transform themselves into magic. They're not fixed; they change from telling to telling, and from listener to listener. I want my pictures to have that same quality of mutability. I don't want things to be fixed too solidly or explained too fully; I want each viewing to be like a re–telling of a tale, full of new possibilities." [. . .]

"I find that some fantasy genre painters tend to over–paint their pictures; they're a bit too . . .over–wrought for my taste. When I look at them I find them much too bright and shiny. The artist has finished every detail, and every edge is hard and bright — which doesn't allow me into their world, my eye slides right off that shiny surface. I prefer to keep the rendering as loose as possible, just on the edge of being finished. I want a painting to give just enough information for the picture to make sense; there should always be a little bit kept back, a few pieces missing, which the viewer must supply himself. In doing that, the picture comes to life. It becomes part of a reciprocal process, a communication. The painting allows you inside, where it can grow, and you can grow."

- Brian Froud as quoted in an essay by Terri Windling, Brian Froud: Portrait Painter to the Fairies

I both sympathize and emphathize.

Capturing the Elusive with the Stroke of a Brush

Artwork of fey-creatures and shape-shifters for your appreciation:

• Bacchanalian Scene by Richard Dadd
My first glimpse of this painting was as thumbnail image of the cover of Loreena McKennitt's To Drive the Cold Winter Away, and I was immediately captivated. I'm seriously considering this image for my first tattoo. Thalia Took, an artist herself, has scribed some beautiful and entirely apropos words to describe his work:

Dadd was a Victorian fairy painter who in his early twenties developed schizophrenia/severe bi-polar disorder and then murdered his father. He spent the rest of his life in an institution, where he continued painting. Some, not all, of his paintings have a fey, alien quality to them. The best I can say is that his humans are not human, and have a genuine wildness to them, a deep unconsciousness, impartial and malevolent, like looking into the eyes of a leopard. Gorgeous yet disturbing. Very compelling.

I doubt that I could have described it better myself.

• The Bacchante or Head of a Woman with the Horns of a Ram by Jean-Léon Gérome
This painting verges on being stark, but the delicate folds in the Bacchante's sleeve and the aching curves of the horns endow it with a surprising sensitivity.

• Birthday by Dorothea Tanning
I had the pleasure of discovering this painting in person at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it inhabits the Modern and Contemprary Galleries. This .jpeg reproduction does the painting little justice. While it is a surrealist self-portrait, it nevertheless seems to possess the taint of fey. The artist, in her tendril-adorned dress, reveals a series of open doors stretching to infinity. Her strange, winged familiar is poised by her feet.

• Lavinia, Deer, and Rabbit by Sam Weber
I discovered the work of this artist in the 2006 Illustration annual of Communication Arts magazine. I am enamored with his technique of rendering trees, a method which gives the impression that he glues elegant pieces of driftwood directly to the paper. Upon visiting his website, I was delighted to find animal-people among his subjects. His sketch of "Rabbit" reveals something of a trickster character. (I couldn't resist including "Deer" in this list, because, well - it's an illustration of deer!)

• Flidais by Forest Rogers
I was guided to the remarkable work of Forest Rogers some time ago through a link on the Endicott Studio webpage, but I had not visited her site recently (shame on me!). I was again guided back to her amazing figurative sculptures/art dolls through the Endicott Studio and discovered this piece which especially tugs at my heartstrings: Flidais a simply gorgeous rendition of a WhiteDeerWoman. She is the artist's vision of a Celtic Goddess of wild creatures and sexual potency. Be sure to view all of the photos in this gallery otherwise you may be apt to miss some lovely details. Her feet are particularly well conceived - at first glance it might appear as if she simply has her toes curled in an interesting fashion, but this is not the case. Her creations possess a Pre-Raphaelite beauty which I really appreciate, and her commentary is also intelligent. She has an all-around great website which I highly recommend.

• Faun by Lou Rogers
This remarkable painting was created by sculptor Forest Roger's late mother. Evidently artistic talent runs in the family!

• First Blessing by Dawn Wilson-Enoch
Fresh out of college Dawn emerged as a fantasy book cover illustrator. Although she gained renown for her work in that field, the type of art required of her in that career became spiritually draining. She now creates visionary paintings and jewelry based upon the landscape surrounding her New Mexico home. First Blessing is a piece partially inspired by the work of another artist enchanted with the desert southwest, Windling's novel The Wood Wife.

Faery Nature & the Nature of Faery {a work in progress}

Two paths mark the way to Faery ¹. The first dazzles the eye with an assortment of glittering accessories and pretty trifles. It is easy to locate; the merchandise will lead the way. The second path is a bit more difficult to come by. Legend tells us that it can sometimes be found while trying to follow the ghostly blur of a white deer through the forest or by stumbling upon a ring of mushrooms and fertile grass.

Like so very many things, Faery is not what it seems. Even the fairy tales of our youth, in their true forms, contain sometimes gruesome elements, and there is not always such a happy ending awaiting the protagonist at the end of the story. Many so called "fairy tales" began as folktales catered to an adult audience. The sanitized versions that are read to children to sooth them into sleep and assure them that the hero/heroine always triumphs came later. For instance, in Hans Christian Andersen's original The Little Mermaid, the title character does not marry her handsome prince, nor does she acquire an everlasting human soul through his reciprocal romantic love, in fact, she commits suicide, throwing herself into the ocean while still in human form.

The same can be said of Faery. Modern culture has taught us to regard faeries in much the same way as we now regard fairy tales. We have been fed a pre-packaged, sugar-coated, and well-tamed version of the original:

At the end of the 17th century the sophisticated French fairy-stories of Perrault and Madame D'Aulnoy were translated into English. They began as real traditional tales, polished to meet the taste of the French court, and they were equally popular in England. Half the court seem to have tried their hands at them, and as time went on they moved farther away from their original. The fairy godmothers, already at one remove from folk fairies, became relentless moralists, driving their protégés along the path to virtue. The trend persisted into the 19th century, and it was not until a quarter of it had passed that the researches of the folklorists began to have some effect on children's literature. [...] At the beginning of the 20th century, an extreme tenderness and sensibility about children almost overwhelmed the folk fairies and turned them into airy, tenuous, pretty creatures without meat or muscles, made up of froth and whimsy.²

Faeries are an extremely diverse group, encompassing many, many emanations, yet at present many only acknowledge a very limited portion of their potentialities. The word faery (or "fairy") in our times conjures images of childlike sprites dressed in leaves and flower petals, beings who only exist to be of benefit to humanity. Another exceedingly popular image is that of an attractive female with butterfly wings. Some individuals seem to honestly believe that these archetypes define Faery – that it begins and ends with such shallow, hackneyed images. These people speak only of fresh morning dew, sparkling fairydust, toadstools, and delicate wildflowers. They cannot speak for the totality of Faery, and there is more to Faery than meets the eye: "Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels...Elves are terrific. They beget terror...No-one ever said elves are nice."³

If one is to discard the definition of a faery as simply a diminutive humanoid being with pointed ears and a penchant for mischievous behavior, then we are forced to ask: what is Faery? Admittedly, this is not an easy question to answer. In fact, it may not be a question that we are entirely capable of answering. Faery will not manifest itself in a lab setting to be measured, dissected, and classified by empirical science. This trait of Faery is likely why a belief in it has persisted even until the present day when science and segments of "rational" society have denied its existence: at the moment, science cannot prove its existence, yet it cannot disprove it either. While a belief in faeries by the uneducated peasantry can often be dismissed as the product of ignorance and an active imagination, "this is not enough. Even let it be granted that nine out of every ten cases of experiences with fairies can be analyzed and explained away - there remains the tenth. In this tenth case one is obliged to admit that there is something at work which we do not understand, some force in play which, as yet, we know not. In spite of ourselves we feel 'There's Powers that's in'"⁴.

But still the question intrigues us, and so many have sought a working "definition" of Faery. Probably the best and most encompassing definition, in my opinion, is that faeries are spirits of Nature. Of course, even this description begs us to question further what both the notion of spirit and Nature really imply. The term "nature spirit," and even the word "Nature" itself, is often construed as having a much narrower realm of influence and implication than perhaps it should. Some find the application of "nature spirits" to describe faeries as almost demeaning and hopelessly limited. For instance, author Rae Beth matter-of-factly dismisses that term: "Faeries are not nature spirits, they are not flower devas, and they are not tiny. [. . .] Their business, partly, is to weave fate." ⁵ While there are certainly ample examples in myth and folklore of faeries who are tied to specific plots of earth, landscape features, and even to particular trees or bodies of water, Nature can have much deeper, more profound connotations with regard to the nature of Faery. Nature is not simply the physical soil beneath our feet and that which grows from it. It is not simply pastoral scenes and verdant gardens. Nature can also refer to the nature of existence, the nature of the unseen world which is embodied by and intersects with our own. Nature is not exhausted by its familiar, tactile manifestations in flowers and rocks and winding streams – Nature should be considered a verb as well as a noun. The relationships and processes that bring those tactile elements into form and erode them back into oblivion are also Nature. Ultimately, Nature is the fiber from which Fate is woven, and it is also the complex, interlacing patterns that define the fabric of Fate itself. Therefore, "nature spirits" is only limiting insofar as an individual's concept of Nature is hopelessly limited.

Tracing the roots and routes of language can often reveal older patterns of thought, illuminating links that were previously sensed
between entities and acknowledging their true ancestral connections, thereby reinforcing intuition with history. Etymology has indeed linked "fairy" and "faery" with the mysterious powers of Fate. Though a more recently introduced term in the vocabulary of the intimate, yet generally invisible realm of the Otherworld and its inhabitants, Faery and its linguistic variants has been almost universally adopted in reference to that realm by European cultures. In numerous lands, however, even though that word is widely known, it may not be widely used by those who truly understand how close at hand the Otherworld is. Comprehending both the inherent potency in that term as well as the fact that faeries revile mortals who try to pry too deeply into their affairs, these folk will nearly always avoid its usage and will instead choose to either refer obliquely to "Them" or to exercise a bit of humble glamour by utilizing less dangerous, more pleasant-sounding euphemisms.


"[W]e are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast 'clod of the valley' which he tills and condemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation."⁶

"It is obviously the purest anthropomorphism to assume that the absence of a human quality in bird, cloud, or star is the presence of a total blank, or to assume that what is not conscious is merely unconscious. Nature is not necessarily arranged in accordance with the system of mutually exclusive alternatives which characterize our language and logic. Furthermore, may it not be that when we speak of nature as blind, and of matter-energy as unintelligent, we are simply projecting upon them the blankness which we feel when we try to know our own consciousness as an object, when we try to see our own eyes or taste our own tongues?"⁷

---

Footnotes and Bibliography

1) Technically, according to the traditional ballad "Thomas the Rhymer," it is the third path that is the road to Faery: "O see not ye yon narrow road, / So thick beset wi thorns and briers? / That is the path of righteousness, / tho after it but few enquires. / And see not ye that braid braid road, / That lies across yon lillie leven? / That is the path of wickedness, / Tho some call it the road to heaven. / And see not ye that bonny road, / Which winds about the fernie brae? / That is the road to fair Elfland, / Whe(re) you and I this night maun gae."
2) Briggs, Katharine. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. 166-167.
3) Pratchett, Terry. Lords and Ladies. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. 169 - 70.
4) Evans-Wentz, W.Y. The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: The Classic Study of Leprechauns, Pixies, and Other Fairy Spirits. New York: Citadel Press, 1994. 119.
5) Beth, Rae. The Wiccan Way: Magical Spirituality for the Solitary Pagan. Blaine, WA: Phoenix Publishing Inc., 2001. 84.
6) Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Island of the Fay." Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2001. 228.
7) Watts, Alan W. Nature, Man and Woman. New York: Vintage Books, 1958. 6-7.