Style1½ inches thick (3.75 cm) Product Details Artist grade canvas, archival inks, wooden stretcher bars, and UVB protective coating
AvailablityUsually ships within five business days. ArtistEric Brown CollectionMirovia
Description We were little more than beasts in the beginning, each fighting for our own corner of something in the nothing. We could not destroy, only wound, but our venom flowed like rain. Eventually we made peace.Still, all our venom, all our malice had poured down, scorching the earth, to pool beneath, throwing off retching fumes til Azrael thought to set it alight. And Bael thought to call the worms. We hoped they might grow bloated and fat feasting on our poison til we could fetch them one by one from the lake to kill for sport. Little did we know that from the greatest acts of darkness can come burning light. They say the keys to heaven work as well to the gates of hell. This could not be more true. He swam there, with the host of worms. His only claim to divinity being that he was the first to crawl forth.What a curiosity he was, this worm with a wish for legs; with the belief that it was something more. It quickly became apparent that this creature, anointed in our venom, had a unique power. What it could be made to believe would manifest before us. We welcomed him, played his little game. We took turns, each of us, whispering the most absurd things to this creature. Some of us, it would believe. Others, it would not, though it always listened to me. Camael whispered of lush green forests to cover barren and scarred earth. Gabrael whispered of oceans, vast and pure to divide the land. Uraem whispered of blinding light. We hated him for this even as we marveled at its beauty. Nathanael whispered of stone and earth, come to life, to graze upon the forest, swim the crystal seas, or soar high above it all. We looked upon this new creation and marveled, for it was good. It was I who first tried the unthinkable, to make the worm believe something about us. Until then, we had no form, only will. So, I whispered to it, Dear betta, little one, turn round and face us. Do not be blind to our magnificence, for we are mighty as the eagle, and cold as starlight, and beautiful as
Eric Brown, Sherrill, NY Member Since November 2011 Artist Statement People often tell me that my work depicts the imaginary. I guess what they mean is that I don’t paint the real world – you know, still-lifes, landscapes, portraits. But I don't see it that way. The world is insane. Insane and horrific. And undeniably beautiful.
All of my work deals with this truth. I don’t replicate the mundane because for me, the mundane is the fiction. The fruit in that bowl – it was born in the decaying flesh of a thousand creatures that once clung desperately to life. And even now, the fruit plays host to a horde of maggots, writhing just beneath the surface. To paint it any other way is to tell a lie.
That landscape – it was forged of the cast off detritus of a billion dying stars, forged through mind numbingly complex geological processes that spanned eons. That rock in the foreground, the one casting the pleasing shadow upon the grass, it was once part of a great ridge bisecting the continent of Pangaea, a ridge in whose shadow behemoths prowled some two hundred million years before man took his first clumsy step.
And that portrait – just thirty layers of dead skin encasing an organism created through an imperfect reproductive process resulting in no fewer than sixty unexpected mutations, any of which might result in horrific disfigurement, or abilities that far surpass anything that could be called human. Does the portrait capture the being's fathomless ability for kindness? Or cruelty?