They Belong To Me, original upcycled vintage painting

Note : Prints will be available for this painting within the next couple weeks... drop me a note in the chat bot below if you want me to let you know when they are available! 

"There. There they are. They are mine! They belong to me! The Red Bull gathered them for me one by one, and I bade him drive each one into the sea. Now they live there. And every tide carries them within an easy step of the land, but they dare not come out of the water. They are afraid of the Red Bull." -- King Haggard, The Last Unicorn

This is where my lore started. This 80's animated film, featuring the voices of Christopher Lee, Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges, both enchanted and haunted me! It made my little eight-year-old heart hurt when the unicorns were captured by greedy humans... and made my heart swell when love and magic won out in the end. It left my childhood self ever searching for white mares and hoping they were unicorns. I can't make it past the opening song without crying... that first moment America starts to harmonize, that's it, the waterworks start! 

Reading the novel by Peter S. Beagle, I appreciated the movie much more. The jokes, the side stories that seem unexplained... all is filled out much more in the short book, especially with Smendric the Magician and Prince Lir, there's more to their characters than the movie can portray. It's beautifully poetic how while in the story humans are physically capturing unicorns, the magic of unicorns emotionally captures those around them (and that is what in the end saves them.) 

With this alteration, I wanted to capture that feeling King Haggard had when he looked on the unicorns he had the Red Bull capture for him. As I painted, I thought on the message that Peter Beagle was telling us in this fairytale... that humans have an insatiable desire to possess and control beautiful things.  I kept the unicorns very subtle, because not everyone could see the unicorns... you have to look for them! There are 45 unicorns in this painting... because I turned 45 years old while painting them, so felt right in a mathy sort of way. 

I enjoyed drawing studies of the movie before I started painting... and I have to say, even as a child Molly Grue's character had me in tears when she saw the unicorn as a mature woman. Watching it myself, a similar age to her and having never seen a unicorn... it was poignant and I was blubbering! 

"Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you? How dare you come to me now... when I am this?" --Molly Grue

(And I want to say a special shout out to René Auberjonois who was the voice actor of the skull... in my family we watch Star Trek while folding laundry, and are up to Deep Space Nine... and my kids were shocked / delighted to discover that Odo was the weird skull!)

Original vintage art : This vintage painting was collected locally in Mississauga, Ontario. It was stored in a garage and had some cement splatters on it, which I cleaned off. 

Frame : The wood frame is in very good condition.  It has been rewired and is ready to display on the wall. It is not heavy.

"They Belong To Me"

painting by Heather Castles
2 x 4 feet, vintage canvas + vintage frame

Shipping : This is an XL painting, the shipping will be more than what the calculated cost is. I have sent similar paintings across the USA for $300-700.