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in August, at Gen Con Indy, I was approached by a man who was starting a
book called "Lands and Legends". It is a book of illustrations based
on various myths, legends and fantastic places, from all cultures
around the world. I was saying yes to his pitch in no time. There
was already a huge list of amazing illustrators involved and he had a
great financial plan for this book that would involve a Kickstarter
campaign. He had a list of ideas for various subjects that would meet
his criteria, as I glossed over the list, "The Golem of Prague"
jumped out at me and my mind was made up that this was my subject matter. The Golem has been a subject I have
wanted to paint since I came back from Prague four years ago. I went to
a service in the Old New Synagogue (depicted in the background of the painting) with my Wife and Father-In-Law,
knowing full well that what was left of the Golem was still living in
the attic above me.
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was a tough challenge, I had to depict this story in a way which would
not come off as Anti-Semitic to the casual viewer. The story is, Rabbi
Loew created this Golem to protect his Jewish community from the
Christians who were accusing and killing them due to a rumor that the
Jews were committing Blood Libel. This was a completely false accusation, but
Christians were killing Jews nonetheless. Eventually, after saving many
people, the Golem stops working properly and it goes on a warpath. The
Rabbi turns the Golem off by rubbing one of the letters off it's
forehead, changing the phrase from "Truth" to "Death". I didn't want to
show Christians as being the victims of an awful monster gone haywire,
so I came up with a more delicate moment, when the Rabbi turns his
creation off, ending his relationship with a being he treated like a
child. I hope this came out looking true to the story, and interesting
as a composition. |
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