The Bears of Mountaincholia
Hello Moon Travelers,
We have some new faces here and I want to welcome you and tell you how honored I am that you would take the time to view my work beyond its usual platforms! For those unfamiliar, my Patreon focuses largely on behind the scenes insights into my career, life as an artist, and my in-progress art book Mountaincholia, which, while being personal passion project, is being created largely for those who follow my work. Wonderful moonbeams such as yourself. A large goal with this project is to empower those who are struggling in their lives, give them a sense of understanding and knowledge that they are not alone, and nor are they weak. While the book deals with some heavy topics, I feel it is important in my work not to shy away from dark subject matter as so much of it is already suppressed in the society I grew up in which I believe is deeply unhealthy. Here is an early look at a sketch from my art book as well as details on the symbolism of the Mountaincholia bears.
As I have mentioned in past posts, none of the spirits of Mountaincholia have a 100% set appearance yet. Many of them are merely symbolic souls in the bodies of similar characters and species, although a good number of them are developing fairly set characteristics, such as the bear now having two faces. Keeping the work experimental has allowed me to explore various ideas and representations of the elements each creature is suggestive of.
Preceding their two faced design, this character made their way into my work several years before Mountaincholia officially became a project when I did a series of symbolic drawings on wood. Here, they appear with the initial incarnation of the Mountaincholia mink. While their design varied vastly at that time, their representation was much the same. This character is manipulative and unpredictable, clumsy, and parasitic. They prey largely on the naive and gentle. They could never fool the Mink.
It is worth mentioning that the two-faced bear is not the only ursid that exists within the landscape of Mountaincholia, the more vulnerable feeling bears within the work, referred to collectively as “the cub” despite age and appearance variation, while rumored to relate to the two-faced bear, are not the same character and largely represent vulnerability within a home setting, particularly the vulnerability of children and parents under the constraints of abuse.
As always, thank you so much for your continued interest and support of this project. Whether you enjoy viewing my work and placing your own stories to each image, or if you like hearing the ones I intended for them, it just means a lot to me that my work is appreciated at all and I enjoy sharing it with you greatly.
Be well~
~Aria
