Mahr's Gallery

[Hemolymph]

These are rumored works of a Barovian painter. Among the common people these works are almost unknown, especially due to the general disinterest in the arts in this region. Nevertheless, those who paid attention know their work began around 777, and each painting is signed with a small caricature of a horned moth; the most observant or knowledgeable could see the resemblance it has with a local folk monster: a bizarre moth demon known as the mahr.

[Hemolymph]

[1st. The Fiend and the Lady, 777.] Upon a well-lit rosy temple’s hallway, a stately and taciturn nun in harried stride has her habit’s flow yanked backwards by a foulest hunchbacked chimera of trumpeted snout, thrice pronged horns, clubby legs, a fishes’ tail, and exorbitant eyes of gleeful malice: for the nuisance knows it has caught the paragon’s attention through the corner of her eye. Soaring and opposite to the grotesque, an open-winged raven shines ultramarine; it’s claws tug at the anchorite’s shoulder to aid her escape- for now. Almost invisible, the outline of a horned moth lingers on the paint’s lower left; the painter’s signature.

[2nd. The Dreams and Temptation, 777.] Within the bare walls of an intimate room, a softly crying woman bows her head, brunette locks lower to caress a feline-fiend obstinately curled on her lap; her nape parts in a blaze reveal an oniric realm's horizon, within the flames: A scramble of shapes and colors- a silver chalice as if a vessel in a trudging river; rusted soldiers drown within it, a plethora of pikes as if reeds; the misshapen outlines of breasts, lips, arms and feet; inward-collapsing towers and steep-gabled homes. Outside, the woman is inconsolable; fingernails tear at the arches of her eyebrows, their trail a bright ruby red. The usual signature is unobtrusive: A horned moth's outline, this one at the lower center.

[3rd. The Sorrow and the Rubies, 777.] Central and shimmering, pentagonal rubies are cradled by two femenine pallid pleading hands which rise from a bed of raven’s feathers against a hazy muddy-green backdrop, softly dappled circlet tears tarnish the canvas. The pitiful hands slant forward, offering the baleful 'treasure' to the viewer, held in weary appeal by coiling vines; they sprout the deadly nightshade’s five-pointed flowers near the finger joints, lavander bells toll. The tiny outline of an off-white horned moth is flicked on the canvas' lower right corner, the painter’s signature.

[Paiânjen, 777.]

Under a night's pleasant shade, where malachite woods and beige cushions bleed together, a bordello's woman reclined over a chaise lounge makes a show of her decadence and success. The protagonical figure's depiction lazily plops minty grapes in her mouth; her hair a loose updo, and her demeanor sultry: between folds of burgundy satins, quadripartite spider legs dotted bright red pose for the viewer.

Above her a dozen slumped bodies are peppered along the apricot canopies' ascent, they are restrained by gossammer shackles, stuck to branches and on beds of horizontal mushroom heads; they are eerie-still, and they cradle honey-hued bottles. Below, loose strokes resemble trampled grasses, rotten leaves and a pair of silver wildflowers. Upon one of them, the artist's signature: the outline of an dappled horned moth.

[Amintirea unui Preot, 777.]

The morning's disparate features come together into a priestly, guardianlike figure. Everyday's clouds rise tall over the Grey City, but today they are carried by gentle winds that refuse to rain. Their edges are silverlined, and the inner mantle shades together into a masculine, caring face. The gaps between give the impression of abundant scarring, and through them pass pale rays of sunlight. Two ravens accompany eachother: they are his eyes.

The figure is anchored to the bottom of the frame by a muddy-brown foreground skyline. Thatched, triangular and irregular rooftops. The commoner's chimney smoke rises graphite, only to purify above. Windows are open, and within children play, men holler, and women hang up clothes; they are watched, and they do not know.

A beige dappled-and-horned moth is signed on the lower right.

[Hemolymph]

[Arborele Nostalgiei, 778.]

A clearing amid imaginary woods, a transitory and liminal space where nightly dreams and feverish visions overlap. This no-place is framed by a blur of crestfallen willow trees in graphite-green tempera.

The colors grow in intensity and opacity at the center of the canvas, where an oaken tree's deep hollow nook acts as a dark backdrop and gnarled archway to a bright cerulean elven apparition. She is an inviting presence, appealing directly to the viewer with a slender outstretched hand and her tired grey-blue eyes. To dwell in her gaze is to find a kind-hearted appeal, as if a mother offering her guiding hand to a lost child.

Many details abound for the patient eye. The elves' translucent-blonde hair lightly curls when it reaches down to her waist, and though her skin is fair it is lightly speckled with mud; further, she's marked by a scar on the left side of her lips. Odd insects dot the periphery, such as worms among felled leaves. A horned moth is flicked onto a corner of the canvas: the artist's signature.

[Hemolymph]

[The Dance with the Fairies, 778.]

The eye is easily drawn to this remarkably bright work. Its tempera pigments are vivid and bold, giving the impression of emitting light on their own. The noon-day sun which engulfs the topmost horizon is a searing incandescence that goes beyond a mere circle. The sun goes unchallenged by clouds, and as one's gaze descends, the sky becomes a pleasant teal.

Its calid rays shine onto a sandy clearing where a lakeside celebration is taking place. A humming congregation of people around a burning bonfire. As if out of a fairy tale, thin sylvan figures with translucent butterfly wings dance and frolick around it, holding hands with a speckle of addled-eyed and ecstatic villagers dressed in earth hues. Their wings come in sunset tones: intense reds, waning oranges, and deep blue-violets. The dancers overlap over one another, as if through their vigorous dance they became a joyful communal blur rather than themselves.

Nearing the bottom of the work, sea foam greens introduce the viewer's eye to the lake's surface. Gentle at first, glimmering on irregular patterns; then sharper, as if a faceted sapphire being held up to a lantern. Below it, the waters become deep and uniform, turning azure into black. In this interstice, an off-white dappled moth is signed onto the painting.

[Hemolymph]

A collection of oddities is said to have been shown at Le Conservatoire in the City of Lights.

[Dor, 777.] From on high, the overcast sky roils like heartache. Clouds part as a wound and sunlight descends on the scene: Two lovers at on a bench, in a private plaza. The likeness of the Vallakian minstrel Duval is rendered in marble whites and bold brushtrokes; short of hair, of incipient smile, and parting their lips for what must've been a merry tune. Stuck in time, his rigid fingers forever pull his harp's string taut. A bonneted, wizened woman clung onto his memory; one hand bound by his waist and the other between his pectorals. Her colors are blurry soft. Olive for her attire, a domestic servant's; flush for her skin. Droplets of tears the shade of kohl stain the statue's thighs, the mourner's skirt, and the cobblestones beneath them. Nobody bothers them, all the surrounding windows are closed. A black dappled moth is signed on the painting's lower left.

[Regii, 777.] A blurry backdrop of rainy greys and a foreground of black, it's protagonist figures resist a single form, and they change depending on one's focus or suggestion: Night. The un-twinkling shrouds of tattered nobility drag behind them; their courts ride lost upon sheerest cliffs. They are only silhouettes: Three-pronged crowns, profile view, beards and braids. They loom. At their feet dance their heirs, incorporeal in malign bacchanal. Night. The thick dales shake blurry, shafts are tall and branches tangled, roots reach wide; they stubbornly straddle the mountain's feet. They are only silhouettes: Bedraggled crowns, brambled almost-faces. They loom. Below, the ruins of oldest wars gently shade the grasses. Almost invisible, the signature: A dappled-and-horned moth rests on a rotting leaf.

[Armata de Caritate, 778.] This piece is composed like a historical war painting. However, it's active protagonists aren't conventional warriors, but Halan healers. Where one might expect bascinets and breastplates, there are impersonal long white veils. Ammunitions are bandoliers of medicinal potables. Women, not men, march as a regiment into a scarred field: War's cruel ruins. The enemy is long gone. Many battered wounded lie on the dirt among smoldering craters. An army of caring ghosts sees them bandaged, sutured, and stabilized. The hopeful needy are carried on stretchers towards humble tents among a villages' husk; surrounded by peeling plaster walls, broken brick, and torn timber. Above, wide skies are choked by smoke-grey cumulus of clouds, accented dusk bronze. Plumes of smoke feed into it from a backdrop of hills, hinting at distant battles. The sun is obscured, yet few precious rays shine on each kindness, like a miracle. A dappled moth is signed on the lower right, where the ruins are blackest.

[Hemolymph]

[The Monoliths, 778.]

A tanned and imperious woman of thick long black hair and an eclipsing tower behind her are the central axis of this work; both preside over the serfs below. She's dressed in deep red finery, poised larger than life, both enticing and powerful. She holds both a sparkling staff in one hand and a crystalline orb in the other, like a magickal sage would.

As a backdrop and her shadow, an immense tower rises with the monstruous boldness of a shrouded daemon. It is completely rendered in uniform lightless void-like black. Together, they’re backlit by a leering sunset, tinting the minaret’s outline red.

The wizardress stands on sharp battlements atop gated walls. In her eternal mercy, she regards the surrounding fields of golden wheat. A legion of tiny farmers, themselves and their tools made of wilted and limp spikes and stems, sweat and work the earth endlessly. Their facial vegetation is fallen, even agonizing. Hidden among the fields is the painter's signature, a horned and dappled moth.