Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Chasing Time
by Witch Named brandee
acrylic on canvas board | 11” x 14”
This piece by brandee was inspired by the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, one of her favorite stories. She has always loved the concept of falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in a fantastical world. All the characters live by abstract rules, but rules nonetheless. And the White Rabbit seems cursed to always be a step behind.
In this painting, brandee tried to capture that curse. The background twists and swirls with warped clocks, mushrooms, and clouds. Tears fall from the rabbit’s distressed eyes. A third eye wide open, the iris of which also contains a clock face.
All the clocks, save for the third eye clock, have too many hands. This is to illustrate how unwinnable it is to chase time. In a world where someone is always late, you never have a moment to sit and appreciate. Even the third eye is distorted by the illusion of time, showing how narrow the rabbit’s focus is. The mushrooms float by, nearly fading into the background, the last reamnent of the physical world still accessible.
Mai Riverrime
by brandee watters | 8”x11” | Acrylic on Canvas
brandee has always had a fasination with faeries & other faefolk. She feels a deep kinship to their magical, tricky ways. This character, Mai Riverrime, originally came about as part of a Dungeon’s and Dragons game where brandee rolled for different characteristics, like the salamander tail and her shimmering, tinted skin. She’s a clumsy but surprisingly powerful magic weilder. The painting came about to create a Magic the Gathering token art. In the MTG universe, she’s a Dimir Faerie Rogue with flying.
She’s a winter faerie — introverted, reserved, and can come across as cold at times. She’s a fierce defender of her friends, though she doesn’t always know how to work her magic outside of the Feywild.
Like many faefolk, her name is not a true name (giving such a thing over would give one power over her) but rather how she came to be in the Material Plane. There are many different points the fae can cross worlds, often they travel by accident. Mai was skating on her favorite river’s frost too close to the frozen waterfall as it began to thaw, cascading her down through planes of existence.