THE WESTERN WIZARD
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| © JODY A. LEE |
Acrylics, 25"x31", 8/92, signed lower left center.
This evocative painting was done for the second book in Mickey Zucker Reichert's Last of the Renshai trilogy. Colbey Calistinsson, the last true Renshai warrior, has been invited to observe the Western Wizard's ceremony of passage in the Weathered Mountains. The ailing Wizard Tokar calls forth visions of Baldur, god of goodness and beauty, and the wolf Mana-garmr, extinguisher of the sun, when he would take his own life and send all his memories, experiences and power into the body of his cowering apprentice, Haim. Both wizard and apprentice are dead after the magical ceremony, and Colbey is left the unwitting keeper of balance and neutrality in the mortal realms.
I rarely do long landscapes like this, and there was a lovely photograph by David Muench that inspired this unusual color scheme. Mickey is such a wonderful writer, and there is so much thought and balance to her stories. This title, though, gave me the problem of needing to put a Western Wizard on the cover, but not to give away the secret that the Wizard was now Colbey Calistinsson. Therefore the cover illustrates a part of the book where Colbey tells Shadimar about the old Western Wizard's demise. This painting is available already framed.