A little fan art from me based on a comic panel by Ron Lim. Pretty happy with this one.
All Images By William DeGeest ©2015
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
A well off, upper middle class guy was unsatisfied with his life. This lead to poor performance at his job and his marriage and almost everything else. Soon enough he had lost his job and his wife left him and took the kids and even the dog. Now destitute and alone, he was even more convinced there had to be more to all of this. He decided to find the meaning of life.
For years he traveled as a vagabond, chasing every lead he could find. He talked to clergy, philosophers, voodoo priest, gurus, wise men and anyone who would listen and try to answer his simple question. What is the meaning of life? No one had the answer.
But he kept hearing rumors, mere whispers at times, that there was a man who knew. Tucked away is some lost corner of the world was someone with the answer he needed. He would find this man.
For even more years he followed every dead end trail, surviving only by the kindness of strangers. His clothes became tatters, his body broken, but his will stayed tempered steel. He needed to know.
Finally, while following a vapor of a wisp of a spider’s silk of a chance, he found himself climbing a mountain in Nepal. He had no gear, his shoes and clothes falling apart. He lost several fingers and most of his toes to frost bite on the accent by the time he reached the summit. There, in the lotus position, but floating four feet off of the rocky surface of the peak, was the man he had sought. Almost dead from hypothermia and starvation, he stumbled to the man.
“Please, please, tell me the meaning of life!” he said with as much force as his weakened body could muster.
“Life,” the floating old man said, eyes remaining closed, his white beard, hair and robes blowing in the wind, “Life is a fountain.”
“What?” Rage began to boil in the seeker’s body. “Life is a fountain? I have lost everything in my life! Family, friends, wealth, health, self-respect! God damn it! I have lost fingers and toes to get here and you tell me, life is a fountain?” His shaking with rage was greater that his shivers from the cold.
The levitating old man opened his eyes, blinked his eyes and then looked at the shambles of a human before him, and once again spoke.
“Life’s not a fountain?”
From the Aboca Museum: “Hortus amoenissimus… by Franciscus de Geest, a famous seventeenth-century Baroque painter from Holland (1638-1699), is a fascinating anthology of plants. De Geest, who had become famous for painting portraits and still-lifes, also enthusiastically devoted himself to the illustration of flowers, which resulted in this splendid manuscript anthology of plants.”
Also check out this YouTube video (not all of it is in English): Aboca Museum – Hortus amoenissimus… di Fransiscus de Geest
Check out my buddy Rod’s body airbrushing, art stuff and more!
Click on the image to get there.
Images courtesy of Rod Zirkle.
Rod is one of my dearest friends from way back, but that in no way makes me incapable of objectively being able of to say his stuff is mighty damn good! Check more of his stuff at Imgur.
The Bakery in de Geest. Picture from WikiArt.org
Sketched by Vincent van Gogh in Geesteren, Netherlands 1882. Charcoal and pencil on vellum.