#alien world

“Morning Ritual”
Acrylic Gouache
12 x 12 inches 
2019

Dan - a memory of a morning spent with a good friend along my favorite river, the Smith River in the far north of California, the last un-dammed river in the state. It runs through the heart of Redwood country, an area of pristine beauty and relatively few people.  There is a private camping spot I have found along a lovely spot along the river. I try to go there annually now around the time the blackberries are in season (in this part of the country the grow wild like mad - and the area around the campsite has tens of thousands of berries bursting on the bushes.  Its fun to start the morning with some berry picking and on this occasion my friend Kat wanted to be photographed smushing some of the berries all over herself for portraits that were alternately slightly gruesome and delicious, before jumping into the crystal clear river for a brisk and cleansing skinny dip.

I wanted to make some representation of this memory that was a bit alien for a group exhibition were asked to participate in at Corey Helford Gallery. Its available now through the gallery!

mirkokosmos:

byShahab Alizadeh

Everlasting Dream  |  Cody Sampson

st-just:

Crash Landing on an Uncharted Planet by Sung Choi

“Wanderers” by Vill Liedo, 2020

These are two wanderers in the endless white desert called Narrasteaf-Vaan (or just Narr-Vaan). It’s an impressively large desert stretching for so many miles, that it seems like this place is truly endless. Despite the desert-looking landscape, this place isn’t hot at all and the climate there feels rather cold. Also, the sand here is more like white dust than actual sand. So, this land is desert-like not because it’s hot, but because it never rains here, and also because this land is filled with powerful energy that prevents plants and most creatures from living here. This energy also affects their minds and orientation, it’s easy to get lost and disappear here… only a few creatures are able to live in such an unusual place - I know moonhorses, who have adapted to feed only on the energy of Narr-Vaan.

However, vaerafes (they are in the drawing) liked this place - it attracted them with a song of energy, so they adapted to live in Narr-Vaan, taming and using its energy. They used obelisks for orientation and connection and walked for weeks, traveling from one town to another. Here i drew two of such wanderers, some of which spent most of their life traveling through the vast lands of this mysterious place…

Dreams for a better world…

Personal illustration for my world, a vaeraf named Lash. Perhaps this is who Lash could be if he had a different fate. Like a reflection of all the vaeraf dreams that fell into helplessness before the immutable laws of life and death.

I just wanted to draw the vaeraf person and their world the way it should be, in their and my own dreams. Their essence, vibe, something distant and alien. And just another living and thinking beings, with their dreams, philosophy, ambitions, hopes and views.

Lash looks so sad and confused here. He has his own will and I cannot deceive him, so he hardly believes what he sees, knowing that this is just a dream.

“Conflict” by Vill Liedo ~

A continuation of my previous artwork “Vibration”, but this time I decided to draw a conflict between two vaerafes. This is probably the first time (at least in recent years) when I used such a composition to show a conflict and aggression. I very rarely draw on this topic, although it definitely deserves some attention, and the conflicts and battles of the vaerafes are no less interesting than their communication and expression of love.

Vaerafes usually don’t like brute physical strength, and most of their fights take place through “telepathy”, energetic and mental contact. Of course, sometimes this mental fight is combined with a literal fight, but this depends on the situation and the culture of the individual vaerafes. Those who live in a developed society use physical fight less often. However, in general, nothing prevents them from combining a mental attack with a physical attack, as well as with a verbal one.

It’s not easy to describe the process of such a “mental fight”, since it doesn’t look or feel like a literal or verbal fight. In part, it resembles a tense dispute, and vaerafes use all their knowledge, experience, skills and talents, trying to persuade the opponent, or mentally suppress them, forcing them to retreat. It’s just that in addition to words they use energetic contact, the merging of their minds, which allows them to exchange information, experience and emotions directly, feeling each other. And the more personal and important the conflict is for these vaerafes, the closer their contact will be in the process, and the more intense and fierce the mental battle will be.

As in the case of physical strength, the ability to fight mentally requires a lot of skills, experience, and different vaerafes use different tactics. So, some suppress the enemy with their equanimity, which they use to reinforce their experience and beliefs, while others use very bright and strong emotions in their attack. This is not necessarily the emotion of anger, because emotions here play the role not of a personal internal stimulus only, but also as a direct weapon. And the mechanisms of their emotional defense and attack are rather… complex, sometimes even confusing. Skillful vaerafes are able to withstand many opponents at once, and in some cases they even know how to deceive. It’s not as easy for them as it seems, because it’s difficult to deceive someone who literally can feel you in the moment of battle. But learning is possible.

So, vaerafes aren’t harmless and helpless creatures, but an epic physical battle should not be expected from them, since the most interesting part of their battles occur through their mind and feelings.