Mr. Mortok's Hall of Curiosities

The Demon of the Brush

     You are old enough and are ready to move onto the next stage of your training. Your works are beautiful, of that we can all agree, and your love of the art is a soaring testament to your talent. When you were born, I knew it would be so. You were born under auspicious signs which foretold that your talent would be vast and breathtaking.

     You have been brought up with our ways and you know our path, you know our dedications, you know our desires. You have been a good student, never balking at the difficulty of your lessons. Now it is time for us to teach you the last of our secrets. To show you how to mix colors that no other painter will be able to create, how to imbue your painting with the last bits of technique that will separate it from all other works. But also, it is time for you to know the secret. Now it is time for you to understand what purpose our art serves, and why you must NEVER paint a picture where there are two eyes on anything.

     Ours is an order that has existed for quite some time, an order that has dedicated itself to the capture of the world around us in paint and the expression of both the fantastic and the real. But our order did not always exist, we were not always given our secret charge. We descend, both spiritually and physically, from the Demon Painter of legend. Do you know of the Demon Painter? It's a popular legend. Let me tell you the story.

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     Long ago, before your grandfather was born, there was the Painter. His was a style and a beauty that the world had not seen before. His ability to capture the world was utterly fantastic. He traveled, dedicated to learning more impressive techniques, how to create greater and more rich colors,  until he came to where this monastery now stands.

     At the time, the monks who dwelt there were painters themselves but devoted themselves only to the landscapes. Though their work was crude, it possessed a certain life, a certain brilliance that the painter needed to learn to capture. It was with those unskilled monks that he felt that the last of his great techniques would be developed, and his art brought to its fullest and best. The monks were happy to assist, and teach him their ways, but upon seeing his work the monks told him that he must never, under any circumstances, paint any animals or any creatures with eyes, that he must only use their colors on landscapes, as they have done.

     The painter nodded and agreed and was taught how they mixed their paints, where their vibrancy of color came from and the Painter was happy. These quiet and strange monks had helped him complete his lifelong hope as an artist and in return he dwelt with them for a while, painting alongside of them. While they performed their rituals, he painted the spaces that they would chant and pray in. He painted the mountains, he painted the valley, and he painted the river which ran through it. But true to his word, he did not paint anything alive. For a time at least.

     In his heart however, he felt an ache, a soft pang that gnawed at him. He longed to paint the monks within the spaces at their prayer, he desired to paint the wonderful animals he saw during the walks he would take out among the paths that existed among the monastery. He wanted nothing more than to capture the thriving life of his new home. He did not care if he ever sold a single painting, or if he ever left the monastery again. He felt serene but he wished to capture ALL of the world, not just some of it.

     In this, he disobeyed the monks and began to paint a scene that would incorporate a living thing. He did not know what, he hoped that it would be the monks, but as he began to paint, it seemed that under his brush, the form took on a life of its own. Every night he would paint a little more, and each night, a bit more of the strange thing would begin to emerge. Horrible, and yet at the same time majestic, it was a form that he had never seen before, a form that lived only in the spaces that dreams live. And while the form did not exactly look beautiful, it was so vibrant that it looked alive. The Painter thought to himself, 'If this is what these pigments can do, then it is no wonder the monks do not wish to paint the living. These strokes I made have a life of their own, revealing things formed in dark dreams.' Yet as the painting began to come to completion, the Painter began to feel uneasy. The colors would change from night to night, and he could see the expression on the incomplete creature's face twist ever so slightly. In doing so, he realized in his heart that he did not perhaps wish to paint this thing. So he placed an oil cloth over the canvas and set it aside, hidden so that the monks would not find it.