End-of-Series special: Dead World
~ ~
Because all things must end.
With summer almost upon us, the Spring Vignettes series has reached its close. Thank you all for sharing in my little artistic escapade. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did. Stay tuned for whatever I do next.
This is the twenty-first and last Spring Vignettes piece, which doesn’t correspond to any holiday; it’s just an original composition.
Before you read what the piece was intended to portray, share what it portrays to _you_. I’m just the artist; you’re the beholder.
Leave a comment.
~ ~
In the beginning, the primordial gods parted the sky from the earth and raised it up, opening the world.
One day, the sky will fall back down; and the world will end. The sun and moon will be crushed. It will be dark and still, forever.
It will be a dead, quiet, peaceful place. The noise and motion will have faded away into silence. All strife and hardship will be over; just an ancient memory. No one will be left but those who refuse to die, and they will live for such an unbroken eternity that their sleep is barely life.
Perhaps a new world will be opened. Perhaps the primordial gods had to die so they could open the next world for all other dead souls to follow. Maybe that’s how the cycle of the universe continues; world upon world upon world, forever.
Nothing good can last forever; but maybe new good things can be begun.
This is an all-original piece that doesn’t contain much in the way of cultural inspiration. I had a vision, and I expressed it.
The general idea of the sky having been lifted by a mighty primordial god at the creation of the world is inspired by Pangu, who lifted the sky and separated each thing from its opposite in Chinese mythology; as well as Shu, the Egyptian air-god who separates the sky from the earth, and Aztec cosmology, according to which the world we live in is one of multiple successive creations.
At least one major visual influence will be obvious to any connoisseur of neo-8-bit sandbox computer games focusing on mineral extraction.
The brimstone towers in the foreground are inspired by deep sea volcanic vents. The only thing that can fuel an ecosystem without the sun is chemosynthesis, harnessing the chemically active emissions of the earth to sustain life. Perhaps some strange fungal ecosystem could be sustained on the noxious fumes that still seep forth long after the world is over.
This was either the first or second piece that I created last March, when this whole thing all began. I thought it best that it should be the last to be shared.
In the order of release, this is the 21st Spring Vignettes piece; and 21 is the number of trump cards in a standard Tarot deck. There’s no real significance in that correspondence; I didn’t do it on purpose; that was just the number of pieces I was able to do before the ladle hit the bottom of the barrel. I thought it was an interesting coincidence, though. I suppose I could make a Tarot deck featuring these as the trump cards. It would be fun to play with; no different from the modern Parisian decks that are used to play the game today. I don’t know if they’d be any use for divination; maybe they would. If anyone would be interested in seeing this series adapted into a Tarot deck, let me know.