The Mayan's are in!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/68934767/red-ancient-mayan-god-lantern

After another late night, the Mayan lantern is ready and very nice it is too!

The Divine Serpent, the spirit world & ancient Mayans

 

I made the above graphic in tribute to the Mayans, i'm making a lantern which should be available in my shop during the next couple of days.

It depicts the 'The Divine Serpent' at both far ends, 'Quetzalcoatl' the feathered serpent in the centre & 'Xochipilli' God of archiculture & flowers either side of him During blood letting rituals, participants would experience visions in which they communicated with the ancestors or gods. These visions took the form of a giant serpent (The Divine Serpent) which served as a gateway to the spirit realm. The ancestor or god who was being contacted was depicted as emerging from the serpent’s mouth.

Maya religion was far more complicated than the simple worship of gods of nature. The Maya world was composed of 3 layers - the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld.The Mayas conducted ceremonies to keep the demons, creatures and gods in the Underworld, where they belonged.

During certain religious ceremonies, priests dressed up like jaguars and wore masks as they faced the inhabitants of the Underworld to present themselves as equally scary and powerful.

Also,all of the men, but none of the women, used mirrors. In the ancient Maya world, looking into a mirror was an act of courage. The Maya believed that monsters from the Place of Awe could reach through the mirror, and yank you into the Otherworld.

About AD 300 to 900the major centers including Palenque, Tikal, and Copán were mysteriously abandoned. The reasons are still unknown

the haunted room

My latest print (sorry for the bad photo). This is still a work in progress so it might look a bit different by the time it goes into my Etsy shop...

"I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome . . . "

“It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open”

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

I have been thinking about my influences & would say Gothic literature and horror is a massive one. I wouldn’t say I have a love for horror in the ‘shock splatter gore’ sense of the word and I do not wear a long black leather coat and have fangs. But, I love ‘classic’ horror stories: Frankenstein, Dracula, Wuthering Heights, anything by MR James, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P Lovecraft & Ambroise Briece. You might think Wuthering Heights is a odd one to include, being a love story, but, actually it’s a perfect Gothic example.

In my experience Gothic novels include a number of key themes on top of the usual terror, suspense and mystery. And they are as follows. ....

Gothic horror checklist:

• Omens, portents, visions—often the story is based on a prophecy
• Opposites / Light and dark, black & white, good & evil
• Supernatural elements & characters – not explained by science
• Terror evoked through the depiction of physical and psychological violence
• Architecture – Medieval settings or ruined buildings, physical decay of characters reflected through surroundings.
• Explores dreams / the nightmares under the surface of the “civilized” mind or aberrant psychological states
• Features melodrama & mad characters
• Merciless, flamboyant villains
• Persecuted damsels
• Curses which pass down the generations
• Dark family secrets or family curses / incest
• Hero / anti hero with a flaw

"Stop the press! Who is that?" Nothing tra la la Interview time! (with coffee stains)

Strange dream

This tryptich was inspired by a horrible dream i had recently. I was visiting a waxwork museum and in one room there was a display of a group of aristocrats who had been sent insane by using a rare and mysterious perfume, called 'strange'. The dream terrified me so much, that I woke up suddenly (at 3.33am!)

I printed this series in an ink called 'grey blue' from Lawrence which is actually more like a pale turquoise and a lovely colour to print in.

first two available in my shop now, third one will be heading there shortly!

Twist A St Tropez

Search for “Telex” on a music site or file sharing network, and you'll get fifty billion results for a boring Radiohead song. That's because the world is rubbish and annoying and stupid. But the Telex you should be looking for, the Belgian synth-pop band from before there were synth-pop bands, is one of the things that make the rubbish annoying stupid world bearable.

Telex started with the laudable aim of "Making something really European, different from rock, without guitar — and the idea was electronic music."* A jazz musician, photographer and synthesiser enthusiast making pop that came from a different place than the ubiquitous blues-rock ancestry; an aim that was perhaps best realised on their cover of a song that could barely be more steeped in the tradition they were creating an alternative to.

In Telex's hands the song that sent teds into a seat-slashing frenzy, becomes a seductively lazy vocodered soundtrack for a futurist cocktail lounge, a song to listen to while you sip synthetic martinis on a holographic beach. Of the futures that never happened, Telex's light hearted techno-Europa, where you could drive a floating Citroën DS to your favourite cafe, is one I often yearn for the most.

Covers were a always a large part of Telex's approach, but their own compositions were hardly a sideshow.

Moskow Diskow mixed an electronic disco thump with Euro-centric melodicism - a perfectly judged blend that wasn't lost on early house pioneers who often cited the song as a favourite. It's a surprisingly and wonderfully well-realised song, considering that electronic pop - particularly danceable electronic pop - was in its rawest early stages in 1978 when it came out. Only Giorgio Moroder got there before them, but Telex made it sound like they'd been making music like this for years. (The inestimable Kraftwerk got disco the same year on The Man Machine, but they didn't do it so well – their bass drum sound was too quiet.)

Also from their first album Looking For St. Tropez, is possibly the most prescient song ever, Something To Say, which wonders whether new forms of communication will find anyone with anything worth communicating. Telex went on musing on the present and the future, eventually moving on from analogue synthesisers as well as making a Eurovision song contest appearance. They made a return in 2006 (with an album including the requisite rock cover), but after Marc Moulin sadly died in 2008, the remaining two members decided to put Telex to rest. But while search engines continue to give stupid results, what we already have of Telex will always make it better, as you can see.

*Yes, that quote is on their Wikipedia page - I put it there.