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2023/09/15

September 15, 2023
A sunset: a fire-yellow sky over a dark, hilly horizon, fading into purple stripes above. The sun itself is more a blazing yellow stripe than a circle. Scattering into the sky from the left is a collection of large black crows. If this looks vaguely familiar to you, don't worry, I'm fine, and the story about this being his final painting is apocryphal.

2023/09/13

September 13, 2023
An eerie scene. A tall, spindly figure and a thick, crooked tree stand silhouetted against an unsettling green light: the atmosphere of a foggy wood or swamp at night. The figure stands on the left; the tree is on the right. The figure carries a small briefcase or lunchbox in one hand, and has a broom in the other. The unevenness of the ground suggests a swamp or wild area.

2023/09/02

September 2, 2023
A stumpy stone pedestal stands in the middle of an empty grassy area. On the pedestal is a small, child-sized statue, arms out. The right hand holds a long, crooked staff reaching down to the ground; the left hand holds a flaming torch. The statue is wearing a giant pointed Viking-esque helmet with three horns on it. The helmet is about the size of the statue itself. The background and sky are empty, suggesting an open, barren area.

2023/08/28

August 28, 2023
A narrow path winds between sharp, pointed crags covered with trees. The part of the path closest to the viewer is in shadow; ahead, the path is brighter, sunlight spilling between the crags, suggesting an open area ahead. High in the sky sits a blazing sun; a sun that looks like it would be more at home on a desert than mountainous terrain. There are no people in the scene.

2023/08/25

August 25, 2023
A cliff, and then a ravine. It's that part of the evening where it's mostly night: not quite black, but a deep blue. Parked on top of the cliff, at the left, is a car with its lights on. To the right, the cliff drops into a sharp, rocky ravine, filled with weeds and small trees. Down in the depths of the ravine is a person hunting for something with a flashlight. In the background is a blurry suggestion of woods. There's no moon or stars in the sky. The sky is empty.

2023/08/23

August 23, 2023
A cat sits on a cube-shaped stone placed on a small, grassy hillock. There are weeds growing around the stone. The cat is looking over its shoulder. The scene is rendered mostly in blue and green, with a rough texture that suggests a woodcut.

2023/08/18

August 18, 2023
A tree stands next to a house. The house is a simple, blue, rectangular shape, occupying the lower left quarter of the drawing. The tree is a tall, leafless trunk with sticks for branches; it might be dead. Sitting in the hot yellow sky, positioned in the fork created by two diverging branches, sits a blazing red sun. This is the sun of desert at high noon. The window in the house is dark. Placed inside it is a single candle. The style of the piece looks impressionist: bright colors, lots of strokes.

2023/08/04

August 4, 2023
A bowl that looks a little like a flying saucer, with the top open. Coming out of it is a wild, vine-like, very furry plant with a large bell-shaped flower at the end of it. Sprouting from the plant are leaves that look like feathers, and a small white bud.

2023/07/28

July 28, 2023
A tall, rocky cliff with sparse trees on top. Behind it, faded as though it's in the far background, is a mountain. In the sky, approaching, is a helicopter. Further down the cliff stands a figure, as if it is waiting for the helicopter. The figure appears to be wearing a robe and is holding a staff in its hand.

2023/07/15

July 15, 2023
The stump of a tree rises from fog. This is a relatively tall stump, maybe a quarter or third the height of the original tree. On top of the stump sits a large, roundish bird with an owl-like face, hunched into its wings. Sticking out from one side of the stump is a small clawlike hand, holding a large blue egg. Above is a hazy sun.

2023/06/29

June 29, 2023
A chunk of carved stone or clay, with an imprint in it. It's an irregularly shaped object with the carved imprint of a bird on it. The bird, which looks like a sparrow or some small songbird, is vaguely anthropomorphic: it has humanoid legs, wings spread, and it appears to be wearing a shirt with pockets and a tie. If I was still in college, I'm sure I could conjure up some paragraphs explaining how meaningful this is, but I'm not, so it's a bloody sparrow wearing a tie and let's leave it at that.

2023/06/27

June 27, 2023
A tall chunk of wall, standing by itself, surrounded by weeds. This is not the wall of a house or garden so much like a wall you'd find on the border of a country: nearly three stories in height, and you get the impression that it's thick. It's not a simple, smooth wall, either; looks like it's comprised of several other large slabs of concrete or stone haphazardly cemented together. At the base of the wall is an arched doorway in which is tentatively placed a collapsing iron gate. There is, bizarrely, a very neat circular window with crossbars about halfway up the right side of the wall. At the top of the wall is a gap formed by the intersection of several different slabs. All are unevenly sized and missing corners, leaving a person-sized gap in the wall. And for purposes of comparison, there is also a person in the gap, peering out, totally silhouetted—a dark shape, except for the eyes which are eerily visible.

2023/06/26

June 26, 2023
A hiker stands on barren ground, dotted with rocks and patches of grass. We are looking at the back of the hiker. The hiker is wearing a backpack and carrying a walking-stick in their right hand. Above them, looming out of what appears to be fog, is a vast creature whose shape could best be described as "large". The creature is mostly shapeless, with a large body, head, and horns. The creature's face is just a giant, staring eye. It does not appear to have any appendages.

2023/06/24

June 24, 2023
A small railroad station—just a covered platform and signal—sits by a single track, far out in the middle of nowhere. A locomotive is visible in the distance, the headlamps lit. The blurry surroundings suggest fog. Above are a few wispy clouds, and either the sun or the moon.

2023/06/18

June 18, 2023
Three boulders stacked, one on top of each other, on top of a small, grassy hill. The lowest boulder has a mouth; the middle boulder has a nose; the topmost boulder has a single eye. Moss hangs from the boulders, and two birds perch on top of the top boulder. There are no clouds or sun.

2023/06/16

June 16, 2023
A small, extremely localized thunderstorm unleashes a downpour and lightning bolt in one specific spot. The entire storm is maybe not more than 12 feet in diameter. Other than the storm, the sky is completely blue; above, the sun shines. Standing directly under the cloud is a person, grasping the thin, jagged lightning bolt as though it's a string attached to a balloon.

2023/06/13

June 13, 2023
A spike-shaped, rocky mound with three protrusions at the top, sort of like a rough, lopsided turret. It's rough enough to look like a natural formation, but weird enough to make you wonder. above it is a hazy blaze of light, as though something divine is about to appear on the turret.

2023/06/08

June 8, 2023
A hellishly crimson day: a cloud-choked sun at high noon hangs over a wooded mountainside. The sun is dimly reflected in the lake below. Everything is red, everything is washed out. The air looks heavy, either with humidity or smoke.

2023/06/02

June 2, 2023
A small, grassy hill, far out in the middle of a forest. It's early evening on a damp, foggy night. The sky is a deep blue, not black. There is a full moon wrapped in fog, with a blurry tree line in the background. On top of the hill stands a pink, glowing vending machine (the soda kind, not the food kind). On top of the vending machine sits a cat.

2023/05/29

May 29, 2023
An aerial view of a small, mostly wooded island. In the center of the island, dominating it, stand the crumbling remains of what looks like a high-rise apartment block or hotel. The uppermost stories especially are coming apart, as though from a fire. Elsewhere on the island are scattered outbuildings: a small boxy building next to a helicopter landing strip, a lighthouse at the northern tip of the island, the remains of an antenna to the south, and a rusting shipwreck in a small cove. In the top left is a compass symbol. This island has no name, and the few that even know if its existence are happy enough not to speak of it. There is little left to attract visitors: just woods, ruins, and an uneasy sense that perhaps this forgotten place is not as uninhabited as it appears.

2023/04/10

April 10, 2023
Someone wearing a very unique diving suit walks on the ocean floor. The suit has furry pant legs, a giant blue glass sphere for a faceplate, and a fedora, because one doesn't relinquish one's fashion sensibilities simply because one is at the bottom of the sea. The suit is connected to something by a black hose extending off the top of the screen. There are fish swimming near the figure.

2023/04/09

April 9, 2023
A woods at night. The sky is the clear blue of a summer evening; the full moon is high in the sky. A wall of dark trees rises in the background. In the foreground, in a small clearing illuminated by moonlight, stands a tall, mushroom-shaped structure: it looks like a birdhouse made from a tall, slender mushroom. A circular opening is carved into the side of it, revealing a warm, yellow interior light. Right outside the structure, as if it's just exited the opening, is a glowing white ball that's giving of sparks. Up in the sky is another creature; a white winged thing that could be a fairy with birdlike wings and, yes, antlers. You might have imagined forest spirits as looking like pagan nymphs, but we can't all be pagan nymphs I'm afraid.

2023/04/06

April 6, 2023
A vast, flat, desert floor. Rising up from it are huge blocks the size of an apartment building, but they have no windows or doors. They're not arranged in a city grid, or connected by streets; they're placed at random places, in a sort of staggered pattern. One is nearest the viewer, one is a little ways away, and one is barely a ghost in the distance. The sun sits in a partly cloudy sky, at what looks like late afternoon; the buildings cast long shadows. Walking between the buildings, across the desert, is a very small figure, alone, also casting a long shadow. Above, the only other living thing is a large bird circling in the dry heat of the far desert.

2023/04/05

April 6, 2023
A vast rectangular monolith rises out of the desert. On the front of it is the symbol for radioactivity, with a crudely painted horizontal X directly underneath; the overall effect suggests a skull and crossbones. On the side of the monolith is inscribed, vertically, "2067 AD". The sun is partially blocked by the top right corner of the monolith. In front of it, three small figures—desert wanderers, from the looks of them—congregate in front of the monolith. One gestures to it. The characters on the side are meaningless to them, but they have come to know one thing: the dot with the three rays emanating from it signifies one of the bad places; the stretches of desert that, for thousands of years, are known to be cursed.

2023/04/03

April 3, 2023
A small figure stands next to a huge, fanglike spike rising out of the ground. Other spikes can be seen in the distance, faded, as though the air is thick and heavy. A low layer of fog seems to sit right above the ground. The ground itself is barren and scrubby, devoid of all plants except the occasional weed. The wind isn't strong by somehow never stops. You have never felt more alone, and somehow—unsettlingly—not alone. Oh...and don't drink the water.

2023/04/02

April 2, 2023
A collection of huge, glowing bones lies under the ground in a rocky cavern, as though a radioactive dinosaur has died there. The ground above the bones is barren and flat; the sky is overcast. A ghost of a sun shows through. Planted in the ground right above the bones in a small, triangular warning sign. There's nothing visible on the sign, but the shape suggests it is warning about those glowing bones under the ground.

2023/03/27

March 27, 2023
A grassy hilltop, except it's a man with a huge long beard. The man's head is like a boulder sticking up from the hilltop. The man's head looks mostly shaved, except for a grassy area on the top like hair. On top of the man's head stands a small figure holding binoculars, watching a bird circle overhead.

2023/03/16

March 16, 2023
A person raises a giant boulder over their head. The boulder has grass and a tree on the top, and dirt and roots on the bottom, suggesting it was ripped out of the ground. More notably, it also has a giant eye on the front.

2023/03/09

March 9, 2023
A white fish under the sea, seen in profile, upright almost like a seahorse. But the weird thing is that it has fur.

2023/02/28

February 28, 2023
Three fish swim in the deep water. Each fish has a giant human eye that takes up most of its body. Imagine if the eye on your face—not the eyeball, the eye shape itself—had fins and a tail. And there's three of them, deep in the ocean. Unsettling, no?

2023/02/27

February 27, 2023
A lone figure stands at the mouth of a cave, which is also the mouth of a giant stone face in the side of a cliff. Behind, the sun blazes from thick clouds; the kind you see right before or after a rain. There is a faded suggestion of a tree line. The universe holds its breath, awaiting the figure's next move.

2023/02/16

February 16, 2023
A bird emerges from an iridescent egg

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    All work © Chris Silverman