The yellow butterfly splash of color in this artwork is a problem; The image is bleak and the sky is full of snow, but why is a monarch butterfly there in winter? Either it’s a beautiful coincidence, or the bleakness is not from winter, and those clouds and snow in the sky are smoke and ash.
Ravens are complicated; We love their darkness and their mystery, and their place in our mythology: Odin's messengers or Poes Nevermore. They're macabre and mocking, beautiful and cunning. But also they scourge battlefields, bring dark omens, and watch us with an unsettling closeness. What is the allure of the dark and terrible?
We shine brightest when we are surrounded by darkness. We don’t watch movies where nothing goes wrong. The game our brains force us to play to release the dopamine, endorphins and serotonin requires victory over entropy. Artist Ty Meier finds that appreciating joy and beauty requires us to deal with the dark and terrible, that these concepts are inseparable... although to his chagrin his terrible always comes out just a little adorable, like this raven and butterfly.
This 8”x10” print has been glued and pressed to a hand-painted art board. Ty painted some heavy-body glossy acrylic without pigment on the details to give them some texture and depth, and then he lacquered the piece heavily to make it glow.
