Penetralia

Album cover for the band Hypocrisy. This 1992 release was derived from a dream I had shortly before making the art.
In it I had entered an old council house. The kind you find in depressed British housing estates. The interior was just corridor that wound around in a confusing way. Along it were closed doorways, each with a small flower holder at its base, the kind you see at a grave displaying wilted and long dead flowers. Toward the centre of this place there stood a doorway, but this one was slightly ajar, perhaps waiting for a visitor. I stopped and turned, and in that moment felt a vapid presence behind me and the darkness spread. I had to run against what felt like a heavy gravity to find an escape. There came the end of the tunnel, and out into the daylight I saw a stretch of open grassland, and alongside this a small river or stream. On the bank of that stood a blackened tree, twisted and ancient. Its appearance were as if burned out, but with a shine to it like tar and still organic in a living way. Not simply carbonised. The water flowed obscurely and apparently uphill slightly. The day was otherwise bright and without menace.