It’s called ‘Ravens Visit a King” and it’s easy to miss the crown on the lower left of the artwork. Ty Meier, the artist, likes the Italian proverb “After the game, Kings and Pawns go back in the same box”. The ravens are harbingers either as Odin’s messengers or as Poe’s Nevermore raven, and the entire thing is a momento mori, a reminder of death and accelerator of philosophy; When you are reminded that you will die, you believe whatever it is that you believe only harder.
The hedgehog is a counterpoint to the darkness of the artwork, a momento vitae, or reminder of life. He says “While we must contemplate our mortality, don’t let the darkness consume you”.
The original was a pen and ink artwork and is now in a collectors collection; this is a print mounted to a hand painted craft board and lacquered. Ty brushes, in a calligraphic way, the glossy acrylic texture that sparkles over the details in the artwork.
As a side note; Ty has the Horror Vacuii, which in art history is a fear of open places. That white sky that dominates the upper left of the artwork was very difficult for him to leave white. Look at the rest of the artworks around and imagine how hard it must have been for him not to fill that in. But it worked: this artwork is his second most popular artwork and he sells several prints of it at every art show.