New Art, New Musical Obssession

It’s the mission of modernity:
You’ll get what’s yours,
Until there’s nothing left over,
Until you get no more.


And it’s not what we’re owed,
But it’s what we’ve earned.
It’s closer than we realized,
And it’s time now to burn.

~ Kevin Devine, “Another Bag of Bones”

I haven’t done a whole lot lately to further my spiritual goals, which is unfortunate, but my creativity has been nothing if not active. The picture above is a painting I completed a few days ago, depicting Eyvind and Nessa from Juliet Marillier’s historical fantasy novel Wolfskin. Eyvidn is a Viking Berzerk warrior, whose people launch an expedition to the Light Isles (Marillier’s name for what is now Orkney), where Nessa—a priestess and a princess of the natives they encounter—and he eventually meet and fall in love. The story is, as all of Marillier’s novels are, much more complicated than that. However, they are one of my favorite fictional couples, and having recently reread the Saga of the Light Isles (Wolfskin and its sequel, Foxmask), I was inspired to paint them. I don’t normally engage in fan art, but I just felt like painting them the other day. So that’s what I did.


I’ve also been slowly but surely making progress on a sewing project. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with the finished product, as it’s not something I’m making for Halloween, and it’s too ornate and fantasy-adventure-esque for regular wear. In fact, I’m not even entirely sure what the finished thing will look like. It’s a dress, and it’s got lots of forest-green velvet, black leather, green cotton, and dark green snakeskin-print. Its elegant and functional, thus far, like something an Amazon Queen would wear both when running through the forest and when holding diplomatic discussions with some representative of the Patriarchy. As I don’t do a whole lot of those activities (ha!), in short, I don’t have a clue why I’m making what I’m making. I’ll post pictures when it’s finally complete.

Below are some pics of another painting I finished recently. I actually completed it in late August, but I painted it at the request of a friend, and I didn’t want to post it anywhere (neither here nor my fb artwork album) until he’d seen it in person. As of yesterday, I can finally post my pictures! So. I called it The Songwriter. Enjoy.

And, now that I’ve updated you on what I’ve been doing with my free time—what little of that I have—on to the purpose of this post: another musical obsession. Currently, the song with the most plays on my ipod is Kevin Devine & The Goddamn Band’s “Another Bag of Bones.” The song itself is a commentary, so I won’t waste any of your time adding further comments on it here; let me simply emphasize that this song is absolutely awesome, everyone should hear it, and every time I give it a listen, I get chills. Check it out.