The Tale of the Two Worlds

I have just finished the blog diptych for my header and footer. Panel paintings fascinate me. They are like boxes within boxes, filled with picture of stories enclosed by wood. I like how they are enclosed, with several divisions sometimes leading to another set of boxes hidden behind the outer panels. Imagine they are drawers and bookshelves with tiny doors. Each chamber has paintings of stories, and in order to continue up to the end you must open the painted doors, which lead to the innermost chambers, where the most hidden part of the story awaits for you to reach it. Maybe that's the reason why I was fascinating with Netherlandish painting of their triptychs, as well as German Gothic altarpieces, and my favorite among them is the Isenheim Altarpiece. It is a polyptych altar executed by Mattias Grunewald for the hospital chapel of Saint Antony's Monastery in Isenheim in Alsace. It is a complicated, four-layered, painted structure. It was created for those who were ill, to give hope to them during that time when most people resort to their religion because medicine is still relatively primitive and almost as hokey as folk remedies.

Anyway, going back to my previous topic, the diptych was based on my little tale I created when I started painting them. It is a story about the two worlds with one name. Let me begin the story from the upper panel. There was a small village called Estrella.

It was named after the red angel flying around the evening sky to attach the jewel-like stars so that the villagers have lights in the evening. It wants to make the people happy so it does the best to do this.

Until the monsters from far away lands came and savaged the village. The sky became red, monsters are everywhere, and Estrella was no longer a happy, peaceful village.