The heraldic beasts, a wyvern and a cockatrice, have broken loose from their places on an illuminated manuscript and are staring each other down. Will they fight? Negotiate? Will they team up and liberate other beasts from the stuffy pages of mythology?

An extreme application of the ancient tradition of palimpsest, this work not only uses erasure and emendation, but recontextualization to use the elements of history, myth and alchemy to tell new stories and effect new transmutations. Present are the classic elements of gilding and ornamentation, but there are also the hints of hidden layers, ghosts of text and images, pieces from disparate parts of the history of writing and print superimposed to convey feelings of nostalgia and mystery.

This small painting is comprised of many (well over 50) thin layers of paper and oil glazes, juxtaposed with delicate ink drawings. The surface is built up to the thickness of a board and is reminiscent of an archeological artifact such as an ancient manuscript set in amber resin. Its depth and richness is difficult to photograph. The surface is far more translucent and three dimensional than it appears in the picture. The apparent flaws and cloudy spots are reflections made by the scan and do not appear on the actual work.