Fantasy

In June 2025, I created Gandalf in response to a juried show request from the Statesville’s Bloom Festival for art related to movies. I was very pleased with the results.

A short while later, I was listening to Judy Dent read within a performance of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The music and the performance, including Judy Dent, were mystical. It inspired me to create a series based on the play and the music. Midsummer Night’s Dream, along with Mozart’s Magic Flute, are two of my favorite fantasy music/stories. Although I enjoyed Tolkien’s writings, these two are more purely focused on fantasy while Tolkien is also projecting moral issues.

I have a copy of Midsummer Night’s Dream with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. I did not want to copy or even start with his ideas. My approach will be to somehow incorporate the beautiful music with the storied characters. After that, I’ll work on paintings from Die Zauberflöte