SCOTT EAGLE: CITY OF SAINTS & MADMEN

This evening, Ann and I received a pleasant surprise. For a year, we'd been sending in installments to Scott Eagle to buy the artwork he did for my book City of Saints & Madmen. It's just a wonderful piece of work, which not many people have seen in its entirety. Only pieces of it have been used for both the trade paperback and hardcover editions. It's now hanging on our wall in the livingroom--it looks stunning. I remember Scott telling me about the use of collage in the painting. It's partly his original work and partly bits and pieces from Brueghel, Bosch, and photographs. It all fits together seamlessly. But, as Scott told me, the collage wasn't originally seamless. Because each borrowed section came from a different work of art, the light shone from different angles in different parts of the painting. Scott therefore had to match the brushstrokes of these old masters to paint over the collage parts to redirect the light. The amazing thing is, I can't tell where he painted over the pieces and where he didn't. You can see the painting on his web site: http://www.scotteagle.com.

Even more amazing is that the part where there's a halo around the woman's head forms an all-encompassing eye. If you look at the painting itself from a distance, you can see that all the lines of earth and river and cloudsin the background come together to form an eye, which mimics the little eyes that surround the woman in a halo.

It's rather overwhelming to finally have this artwork in the house. It transforms the room.

JeffV