I’ve just received and answered my umpteenth letter from an art student frustrated by his art school’s dismissive attitude toward Fantastic Art. Fantasy art is respected in the “Old World,” but in America it is the red-headed step-child. It is, in part, an unfortunate side effect of the Disney Factor – the mistaken impression that these are mere fairy stories intended to entertain the kiddies. Fairy Stories themselves are the remnants of older belief systems, the roots of which are worth exploring in their own right. Of course these tales were told to children — all our tales are. Sunday school, anyone? But the older beliefs were buried by the newer ones until only the skins of the stories remained like the shrouds of ghosts, the deeper meanings lingering darkly, like kelpies beneath the surface of our canons. What we lose by dismissing Fantasy is huge. The genre is metaphor: Lord of the Rings is chock full of Tolkein’s Catholic upbringing and beliefs about morality, faith, and progress. It shines a light on society: consider Bram Stoker’s Dracula and what it reveals about the conflict of faith and enlightenment in Victorian England, or Shelly’s Frankenstein as commentary on the fallibility of modern science and medicine, or George Orwell warning us against the dystopian perils of fascism and communism in 1984 and Animal Farm. Fantasy art is about the ineffable, secret heart of human existence that our stories and cultures have sought to define for millennia. It is about Discovery. The best fantasy artists and writers understand the depths of myth, religion, and psychology revealed in good Fantasy tales and art. Froud celebrates it. Giger exposes its squirming underbelly. Beksinski expands the dialog with deeply personal visions of his own. My own piece Cerberus began as the visual aid for a role-playing campaign (you can’t get much lower on the cultural shit-list than D&D), but quickly became an exploration of hell and the afterlife seen through several different lenses – Christian, mythological, personal – and the result is powerful because it speaks to and through them all. My dad showed Kali to someone once; they glanced at it and pronounced it “pornography”. They couldn’t get past the nipples to see what was being said. If they knew anything at all about Indian Hindu art, they might see more of what it means – it’s a Westernized interpretation of an ancient Hindu goddess, taken back to her “earth mother” roots to a degree, but also contains commentary on her strengths and failings as a metaphor for spirituality . The entire cycle of life is covered, from creation through birth to death. The three aspects of the European Goddess archetype are there too, in the human cycle: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. But she is blind to the void behind her; she fails in that she sees not “behind the veil”, as it were, into the other realm - the afterlife, which other faiths consider more deeply.