Monday, April 12, 2010

Easter Island

This drawing of Seth's from 1999 was sold recently; I saw it on the Comic Art Fans website. It was originally done on commission for someone who collected drawings of cliffs, asking various comic book artists to draw a cliff of some sort for him. Seth's cliff is actually a promontory or stone needle with an Easter Island-type head carved on the very top, out in the middle of a bleak and deserted landscape, softened only by the gorgeous cumulus clouds.

The photograph below--from today's Bing page--is instantly recognizable as Easter Island. It's all a fascinating sight, and the story about it, which you can see here, is maybe even more interesting. I post this today because when I saw the Bing background, and played the YouTube video, I wanted to show Seth. He would have loved this: both the photo, and the information. He included Easter Island statues in other places in his work. They seemed always to be part of his mental landscape. And besides, he always got a kick out of David Attenborough. We watched the whole Life on Earth series when Seth was in grade school. "Here, just a few feet away, is a group of komodo dragons. They look placid and sluggish, but in fact, they can run very fast, and can eat a water buffalo, or a human."

There is a wonderful drawing Seth did in the mid-90's, which I can't find right now, of an ornate art gallery with many people milling around a giant elongated head of this sort. The juxtaposition of the two worlds is classic Seth, and quite endearing. I'll look for that drawing and post it when and if I find it.