The title was the full set of perameters given to me by the commissioner (you'll notice a trend with that). I'll leave it to you to identify the school.

  Ahhhhh, yes. Nothing quite like a relaxing day's hike out to the old abandonded farmstead....

  I'm certainly not taking any credit for the horned serpent in the lucious garden story we've got goin on here. 

  Ooooo, you bet there's a story here. Enjoy adapting your own. 

  This was one of my earleist attemps at painting "Nebulous Space". I tried several different techniques and solvent reactions to capture the wierdness of space.

  I learned a lot on this painting and have since painted more refined versions, but the chemically distressed original is the one I keep hung.  

  As a point of correctness, when I accepted this commission, I self imposed a requirement that I harvest the animal and tan the hide, as part of the process, while I was in that part of the country on work. If it didn't pan out, well TS for both of us.

  It quite nearly didn't happen, but Herbie, a wretched looking little buck, limped in on me, injured, broken antler and all, while I was bringing down the tree stand, on the last day of the season.

  Pretty sure he was gonna try to follow me out no matter what. Sometimes things happen for a reason.

    Though part of a series of botanical "Monsters". The Cactus Folk are agreeable enough. As long as you don't get in the way of thier endless spiraling migrations to stay in the light of one of their 3 slow moving suns.

  The frozen mudball this particular Guardian iteration lives on, is under constant pressure of being consumed for resources by the expasion  of human controlled space. Thus far he has managed to prevail. 

  Guardian here, at this point in his evolution, had only just achieved sentience and is feeling conflicted about having just performed his preprogrammed duties, in driving off a patrol of post-human explorers, and wanting them to return as he has just realised the concept of loneliness.

  Please join me in the juvenile catharsis of rooting for the unseen defenders, as this invading force of brigands continues to get their asses handed to them.

  The ruptured tank of flamer fuel starting to cook-off the nearby tracer magazine is probably  good indicator of how their raid is going to go.

  Fun Fact: Only the frame is wood.

  I like to think I'm observing this scene drift by from the deck of some kind of grand steampunk riverboat, and for some reason, this is where I want to put in with a small shore party.

  For the record, I did offer the owners to come back at any time and put a big armored dirigible up over the mountains for them.

  So far - no dice.

  When someone says: "Picture your happy place." This ain't it. 

  In my imagination, this lovely old pair of dragons lives way out on this beatifully deserted island, thier active nest settled just back into the dunes by the shore.

  Having spotted a human vessel coming far to close to thier home, the pair of dragons fly out to disuade the vessel with thier presnce and do a little swooping and screeching if necessary.

  The human Captain, in his arrogance and hubris, opens fire on the dragons.

  It is not going to go well for the humans.

......except for the canibalistic dead lurching from the treeline.

  There were some express features to be portrayed in this painting, for sure.

  Nailed It! Though, the woods around here do seem dangerous.

  Fun Fact: The Carrier-Group silhouetted around this tragically cooling star, belongs a group of nomadic post-humans who are also featured in my own long-forthcoming novel.

  Many years later, Herbie is still here with me and our conversation is still ongoing on from when he first wandered over.

  Some hunters, like myself, operate from a pretty spiritual angle; but nothing says "communing with nature" more than freezing your ass off in a tree while trying to remain still enough to let the snow cover you, for 14 hours or so.

  If you ever get a chance, ask some old hunter about things they saw happen out in the woods once they settled in and the forest forgot they were there.

  The omnipresent action in the Great Grey Squirrel Wars is always entertaining. And the F'n turkeys are way scarrier than any bears, big cats or wild dogs, damn things crashing through the brush like trainwrecks to get to their nightime roosts.

  When they really start to pack-up it's rather impressive. Very "Birnam Wood to Dunsinane", if you catch my drift. 

  I assure you, that is the corpse of a very bad man he's eating.

  It's the picture of an alien escape pod crashing into the mountains, behind a cabin.

  Not fine art: Fun Art!

  Bwahahahah, nothing says "No" like UV reactive, DayGlo colors.

  Note to self: Get blacklight picture...

  Well, almost no story. The call here was for an undirected wilderness for imaginations to wander.

  Although they can't breath the atmosphere, fire still works where our friend here is. And good for them. Even stranded on an uninhabited rock, a fire grants us humans a certain degree of comfort.

  Even better for them that I didn't paint what lives under those bushes; because it is the light keeping them safe, not that little carbine from the life pod's emergency kit.

  This is a mulligan as I had to step away during round 1. 

  There is a great story that accompanies this painting. So for now, enjoy the pre-view.