'Tabulae mortuae' (Archives XI)

Or, in English, 'dead paintings'.

The Furaha project started with oil paintings without much forethought. The reason to decide to paint something was that I thought it would look nice. Well, that obviously resulted in some designs that with hindsight simply did not make sense. As I explained in the previous post, one design involved plants with enormous leaves. That idea is gone, and so the paintings that show them are no longer useful. Let's say they lived out their lives. I will show a few in this blog. Note that they are NOT typical of current paintings; they are just stuff found in the archives.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Here is one. It really needs a better separation of foreground and background, but never mind about that. The animal in question was called a 'Mesencephalon meditans'. That name tells you it was inspired by the human brain stem (as seen from the back). Those into neuroanatomy might recognise several brainstem details, such as the 'pons'. The text regarding this animal mentioned that it might look as if it was lost in thought, but the animal would be more likely to be lost in a more general sense. That's what you get if you leave off the cortex.        

I still like the overall shape and lines of the tree. But how would it respond to wind? Would it turn around so the stem could face the wind, and the sails would flap and flutter? 

Mind you, this painting was done in oils, and for The Book it would need a digital makeover. In some cases, I used the basic idea of an old painting but changed almost everything to produce a new one. This particular dead painting was in fact resurrected. Parts of the landscape survived, and so did a much modified 'Mesencephalon'. The tree, however, did not...