'Ophiotaurus' by Jim Burns

Title:	'Ophiotaurus'
Date Created:	2018
Copyright:	© (C)Jim Burns
Genre:	Unpublished Art
Mediums:	Graphite Pencil
Views:	1175
Posted:	12/7/2018

Projects: I have a few quite large-scale projects currently in progress.Some are commissions whilst others are personal. Of these latter, one is based on a Keats poem - 'Isabella, or The Pot of Basil' and which I'm calling 'Poor Lorenzo', another called 'Song to the Moon' and which is inspired by the story of Rusalka and in particular the Dvorak opera of that name. A third personal piece is based on the song 'The Garden of Jane Delawney' by late 1960s English electric folk group, Trees. Commissions include a large piece based on A Game of Thrones and also a 'SpaceBabe' painting for a U.S. collector. Some pencil work - drawings of mythological creatures are underway..steadily building up a collection of those. I'm moving slowly away from commercial work - which was mostly bookjacket work in my case - as this territory has been commandeered largely by a brilliant new generation of 'digitally savvy' artists..and whilst I do the occasional digital piece my preference is for painting and in particular I'd like to produce more, large scale personal paintings - wiith maybe a shift away from acrylics on board towards oils on canvas. My retrospective collection 'The Art of Jim Burns: Hyperluminal' was published in the UK by Titan Books in Septemebr 2014.

In Greek Mythology, Ophiotaurus was a creature that was part-bull and part-serpent. The Fates warned Zeus that whoever slew this beast and sacrificed its entrails to the flames would obtain the power to destroy Olympus, the dwelling place of the Gods. For this reason Briarius, an ally of the Titans, slaying it with an adamantine axe - did just that - but the Titans failed to destroy Olympus because Zeus sent an eagle to retrieve the entrails before they were sacrificed.