They Belong To Me - PRINT 8x10 in vintage frame

Framed print of : 

"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. 

FRAME DETAILS : Reclaimed heavy resin frame, silver. Table display.

FRAME SIZE : 31 x 26.5 cm

PRINT DETAILS : printed on matte photo paper