✨👹✨ORIGINAL AVAILABLE: “What Follows the Scribe” 20x16 Oil on Panel 2025. “Summoner and Scribe” series 5/9. This painting comes framed (US orders only, please! Prints always ship worldwide of course.)

Summoner and Scribe,” tells the story of Benj, a melancholy young lad who gives up on his dream of being an author of children’s tragedies to take a good-paying but unsatisfying job as a scribe for a Master Occultist…who specializes in the summoning of demons.

Here, we see Benj walking home from another hard day of transforming the blasphemous ramblings of infernal summoned entities into elegant prose, portentous future predictions, dark spellcraft, and filthy jokes. But, despite the great pay and benefits his new employment offers, the young author longs to be writing his own stories, and feels crushed by the weight of his untapped creativity.     

Benj, who suffers from a gloomy disposition to begin, feels even more cheerless as his new job begins to follow him home…

👹 DEMONS (left to right): 

• BRUGRAPH: teaches all arts, philosophies, sciences, and secret things like graphic design. He can also reveal all the mysteries of the Earth, wind, and water, what the mind is and where it is, and everything the conjurer wants to know. He gives good familiars and knows dad jokes.

• KITCAN: teaches all manner of mischief, and wears a magick mirror that shows the viewer’s parents in the moment of the viewer’s conception--a graphic sight that has blinded wizard and witch alike. Kitcan is one of seven underworld dukes and commands nine-nine spirit legions. He can reveal the conjurer’s ancestors and excels in creative revenge. 

• RIFIR is an earl who initially appears as a monster before adopting the form of an old sock. His duties include teaching arts and sciences, including astrology, geometry, and the properties of different plants and stones. He also eats bodies out of graves and can summon foul odors. 

INSPIRATION:

The “Summoner and Scribe” series is inspired by the idea of setting aside one’s dreams or choosing a good-paying career over a creative and fulfilling one. Artistic pursuits vs financial security. Personally, being an artist is VERY hard and VERY demanding, and sometimes I consider doing something that pays better, like web development or graphic design. (I have seriously considered both many times.) In this painting, his work begins to follow him home, both figuratively and literally.

Also, I wanted to create a series that included DEMONS! I grew up Catholic and became fascinated by the idea of dark, unseen intelligences that existed in another realm that could influence our world and possess people. The concept is very similar to fairy stories and extraterrestrial encounters. I feel like the Southwestern Bellows, a magickal land where humans occasionally brush shoulders with aliens, would also be home to other entities like fairies and demons. 

This painting took about 70 hours to paint and is cursed….with good vibes only!