Some things I made for Christmas presents...

A Sho Dust Bunny from Totoro for Alison

A Kodama from Princess Mononoke for Sian

A Mexican Mushroom for Roni

Dream#11

Images from Tamala 2010

I am a gentle white cat
From the stars
I can fly when needed
I am part of something
Integral to salvation
The sadness is overwhelming

Something terrible has
Flown over the village
Leaving a trail of destruction
In its' wake
Fire and blood abound
Bodies strew the path they ran

Quiet singing fills the air
The lament permeates all
The dead lie draped over things
A grisly procession
A massacre on a vast scale
I swoop over the carnage

Following this macabre route
Through the streets
And into the village graveyard
Where naive innocents
Had fled that fateful day
In search of safety or protection

They lead me gliding over
The Church itself
Where the roof has been torn off and burned
And the breathless are bountiful
My immortal tears are falling
Glittering to the ground

Falling on everyone and everything
In the knowledge I could not have helped

I wasn't there
I was in heaven

Dream#10

Ornate golden turrets
Rise above houses
Towering higher than
The whole skyline

Castles floating away
As I try
To find batteries
For my camera

Lights pierce clouds
They are evidently
Going to speak
To the stars

This is of
Such great importance
The spires gather
Celestial colours beam

I follow them
Around the house
I grew up in
But it's over

Lights go out
Towers are dull
Summer is gone
I am alone

My Artwork: Obake Series #1 樹木子

Click Image for full size version

Jubokko/Vampire Tree

Anyone who knows me knows I love Japan. And J-Horror. I'm talking the good stuff; Junji Ito & Suehiro Maruo comics, and some Tartan Asia Extreme films such as Tale Of Two Sisters. I have always had a passion for ghosty goodness; it fascinates me.

At the moment, I have a growing obsession with trees and the folklore surrounding them. This piece begins a series based on Japanese Folklore and Obake (ghosts) & Kami (spirits). It is said a lot of these spirits live in trees or haunt them, and I am increasingly interested in why trees seem to hold a certain powerful energy of sorts, seeming to be used throughout the world's folklore in a variety of different supernatural ways.

'Jubokko are said to thirst for and suck blood. According to some tales, they were born by growing near carnage places or battlefields where so much blood was shed on the ground that it was sucked up in great quantities by their roots.

Folklore stipulates Jubokko are not like other trees; if a jubokko is cut, it will bleed red blood. However, they are also fast healers and any branch taken from a Jubokko, with permission, can be used to heal and purify. Jubokko may also hide themselves amongst other trees and bushes, and they may even appear to alter the flora around them. They may make it easy for someone to become lost in the nearby forest, through communication with other plants.'

Dream#9

Artwork by Jennifer Khoshbin

Fuzzy pictures

Fragmented pages

Perfect clothes

White tights

Brown shoes

A date

In the harbour

Secret things

Between us

Dangerous information

Shack nearby

Garbage landscape

Old Camera

Holds dark things

Murderous evidence

Pier games

Watery noises

Winter sea

Pretend love

Covering tracks

Picking through rubbish

Tiny kitten

Blackest fur

Runs toward

Down corridor

Ending dream

Speaks joyfully

'I am here!'

Japanese Artist Akino Kondoh

Akino Kondoh's work is both visually stunning and disturbingly odd.
She is one of my biggest influences, combining Japanese precision with unsettling subject matter.
Her obsession with the feminine and how it affects female lives is vividly depicted in her artwork, using imagery such as young girls, insects, splashes of colour (red is often used) on black and white drawings and fur/flowers.
Reminds me of a Bjork lyric from 'Sun In My Mouth';

"...I will wade out until my thighs are steeped in burning flowers..."

She has also created a series of animation pieces, this one is my favourite.
I found it about five years ago and haven't stopped watching it yet...

Densha Kamo Shirenai

Densha Kamo Shirenai/Maybe A Train by Tama 

No one knows that I'm not here now
I'm waiting for you to tell you secretly

Hey, it's almost time now
The time for us children who are bad at physics
To go walking about in the air

In the evening, click-clack, train jerks into motion
In the dusk sky
We are children born bodiless

No one knows that I'm not here now
I'm waiting for you to tell you secretly

Hey, in the lonely plaza
We children who don't know arithmetic
Are spilling sand from our ears

In the kitchen, clink-clank, the train goes by
Into someone else's house
We are children born bodiless

In the evening, click-clack, the train is running
In the dusk sky
We are children born bodiless
We are children born bodiless

Dream#8/Taxidermy

Last night
I found a tiny deer
In my dreams
Quiet and tender
As a weak kitten
Small and tan coloured

We went to live
In a house full of
Old furniture
And peeling, patterned velour walls
Bureaus and tarnished mirrors
Nailed to the ceiling

Settling in a small room
With high walls
Covered from the floor up
In bookcases and old paper
Thousands upon thousands
Of dusty books remain

And will remain
As we do;
Moth cocoons
Quiet and content,
And even after we are
Gone

Dream #7

Eva Hertz for Lady Haidee

Always cats

This time
Real cats made from
Old patterned fabric
And sawdust

Badly sewn together
Coming adrift at the
Seams
Cloth covered tiny fangs

And trapped kittens

Every dream sees me
Trying to keep track
Of where the defenceless
Have crawled

All this as I make a mess of a beautiful garden
Attempting to plant
Fallen boughs
Covered in white blossom

Dream #6

I'm a teaching assistant

It's a new job and I'm nervous

Trying my best not to

Lose face in front of the kids

A close friend visits me in class

She's terminally ill

And pregnant

She knows her baby won't make it either

All because of one night of

Weakness

When she let her years long

Guard down

I was sleeping next to her then

Doesn't look like herself anymore

Sickly yellowed and clammy

Weak

But still quipping in that usual way

This time I can actually feel the tears

Pouring down my face

Dream #5

Illustration by Lisa Linea

Friends I have never met are with me, camping at an old farm.

The longer we stay, the more it seems that something sinister is going on up at the old farmhouse; a grey stone, crumbling building lived in by an elderly woman in rags.
I investigate while she is sleeping upstairs, using a small brown dog to sniff out suspicious areas in the house. His senses lead him into small spaces where only he can fit. We fear the Woman is a witch of sorts, and is dismembering campers for some dark purpose.

When the dog smells blood, I do.

I head back to camp to tell the others about things, but they are nowhere to be found.
I hear clattering up at the farmhouse, as if I have unwittingly woken the Woman.
The dog has become my cat.

Urgency.

Cat & I must leave a.s.a.p.

After running for a long time,
Constantly checking she is ok,
Pulling her out of scrapes as she runs beside me,
I come to a different place.


It's very quiet.


Pine trees, blue-grey light.


Hazy, white winter forest at dusk.


Too still.


Unease.


Thick snow is falling.


Figures between the trees draw closer around me.

They are gentle and kindly; human shapes with animal heads.

Some are like deer, some woodland animals.

Tentatively walking around as deer might, serene but wary.

Suddenly, it dawns on me that these are the missing people from the farm, transformed by dark magic. Given the mentality and qualities of docile, skittish innocents, they are perfect victims for the Old Woman, as they don't put up much of a fight.
The place is a beautiful tomb.

Although the creatures don't seem to recollect their metamorphosis, enough fragments of memory seem to exist in them to make them furtive. I explain everything and set out to put things right, all the time feeling tracked and hunted.
Finding a chart on a wall somewhere, I realise I need to find a particular shaped hole in some ice in order to break us free of this place. Another clue to our escape is a list of names next to the diagram of the hole.

The animals gather around me, afraid.

A frantic chase ensues with the unseen enemy, across the landscape.

Eventually finding the correct ice-hole, I shatter the surface, and we dive in en force.




Change of scene, change of worlds.




In a stormy night sea alone.

A yellow fish trying to steal my crown.
I plunge in and out of the heavy waves to dodge it.

On the creaking wreckage of a ship now.
Shark circling fathomless water below.
She has a shark body and a human head, with blonde hair.

In a immense crash of waves and spray, she leaps through the bough onto the ship, with an unearthly, deafening scream.


Utter pain, anger and loss.


Thrashing and shrieking through a storm of her creation,
She is weeping the ocean from her eyes.

Dream #4

Image taken from Valerie & Her Week Of Wonders

Large, beautiful cottage painted white

Early autumnal sunny day

Light streams through the house

Amazing kitsch things

I love this place

Everyone I know past and present is here

I find two old keys

Each with something different inscribed on them

Can't remember what they say

All I know is I'm crying endlessly

Hiding away in secret rooms alone

Behind the fireplace

A kind woman is looking after me

Tears keep coming

Dream #3

My fiance and I are housesitting for a friend of mine. Her house is epic in size, huge apartments the size of mansions. The paint has been bright in previous years, but is now dull and peeling.

She has a grey rabbit.

She tells us the house is 'very' haunted, and recounts a couple of sightings. The first is of someone trudging to the corner of her living room, and standing there, head hung low. The second takes place in the large surrounding gardens, viewed from her top floor. A woman with long straight sixties style hair sits naked in ferns in a flower bed, laughing. She appears to be reacting nervously to a lover not yet visible. Suddenly, her expression changes to one of fear, and holding a pale arm above her face, she screams silently as the grey hunched figure of a man takes her head clean off with a shovel. He digs underneath the body, and covers it.

She is convinced by seeing this scene re-enacted over time that there is a something buried in that area. All this seems disturbing to her, yet there is an air of putting up and getting on with things.

I get a sense that there are so many ghosts here it's unimaginable.

She leaves to go to a roof garden party nearby. Later I see her, drunk and giggling, exposing her white tights and crotch to the world.

I have to care for her rabbit while she is gone, so my partner and I take it outside. We know we must, without fail, get it out of the area completely hidden from view, as if we were to expose it near the 'grave', the ghost would rise and something unbelievably horrible would happen.

The rabbit comes adrift from the bag/paper I have secured it in, so I stop to wrap it up. I try to disguise it as a kind of wrapped bread. Somehow this is a like changing a baby, I'm coaxing and cooing to it as I do so, assuring it everything will be fine. Partner keeps a furtive lookout.
The rabbit speaks back in a soft voice, neither male nor female. Can't understand what it is saying.

Sense of encouragement and sadness in its' words.

But we know it's too late. Exposing the rabbit has already set a rising dread into motion.

The air is thick.

Dream #2

I am bleeding. It is part of the greater scheme of things though, and must be tolerated. Swimming in murky water. Feathers from a beautiful girl fall from a box on the side of a partly submerged building.

I catch them one by one, knowing she is gone.

Still bleeding.

Dream #1

Dreamed of injured cats again
Bred in cages with matted
Fur

Mewing

My Work 2008

Makurokurosuke

Hello, I've joined Blogspot to share some fragments of my brain; my interest in all things dark, dreams I've had and some of my artwork.

'Makurokurosuke' is a term used in Miyazaki's Totoro to describe something unseen/spooky, and literally translated means 'very black black thing'.