Markulis dot Com

Beasts
Bulls
& Blasphemers

The pieces in this gallery subdivide into three distinct sets. Throughout my art career, I have often done series of fantastical animal pictures. The Beast pictures represent one of my more fanciful and whimsical fabrications. With them I exploit some really crazy color combinations and freely mix disparate media. These wild, disjointed anthropomorphic creatures appear caught in surreal landscapes. Some observers have even suggested they seem a bit lewd.

The Sun Beast | The Concupiscent Beast | The Ruby Beast | The Malachite Beast

The genesis for the Bulls came from a log sojourn I had in Southern France several years ago. While there I, at first, worked on projects to restore monuments and chateaux from the late medieval period. I also visited Arles where they held Spanish style bullfights in an arena dating back 2000 years to the time of the Romans. Later, I traveled through the Camargue, the vast marshy delta of the Rhone River. This region is populated by scattered herds of semi-domesticated bulls and cattle. These experiences inspired me to execute a large number of bull pictures, three of which are represented here.

The Red Bull | The Blue Bull | The Jester Bull

The Blasphemers series represents a spin off from the Masques series which is shown in another gallery. Why “Blasphemers?” Because these guys all toss brickbats at convention – both artistic and social. Besides, the word fits in nicely with the alliterative scheme of “Beasts” and “Bulls!” The media in this series was fairly simple: colored pencil over an acrylic ground. All the works were done on paper and each piece is 22" x 30".

The Albigensian Goat | The Old Goat | The Knight Errant | The Dragon | The Dionysian Spirit | The Joker

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