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Arrival

Strictly speaking, a chimaera (or a chimera, or however one wishes to spell it) is a monster from Greek mythology with two heads -- those of a lion and a goat -- and a serpent for a tail. Colloquially, though, it can refer to practically any fictional creature with a combination of different animal parts, like the one pictured here.

In gathering inspiration and reference material for this piece, I looked to medieval European art, particularly illuminations from bestiaries. Designing the chimaera itself, I wanted to create a character that precluded definition as belonging to any one category: certainly not human, but not quite an animal as we'd know it either. I chose to give it humanlike hands and to leave its eye as the only part of the piece left untextured as a way to lend the design a slight sense of uncanniness.

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