It has been my intention with this blog to start highlighting my gallery by focusing on a painting that fit each month or season in some way. Because the blog is new, I've had a little bit of a late start, and missed Halloween. However, since it's not quite Thanksgiving yet, and the election process seems to have extended the season of "fear" for many, I thought it was probably still fitting to feature the Wheel of Time™ version of the Boogeyman, Semirhage. And since I'm late with the post and we're almost into Thanksgiving and Christmas, the faint of heart won't have to wait as long for more pleasant paintings to help them "unsee" this Lady of Pain!
Within Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time™ mythology, Semirhage is one of the female Forsaken, or generals of the Dark One. Since he is currently imprisoned in this age, she works to accomplish his nefarious plans to undo his prison, under the hope and promise of assisting in his rule of the people of this Age. She is described as slender and well proportioned, though as tall as a man, with very dark skin, full lips and short wavy hair. In her case, as sometimes happens, evil is couched in beauty.
Originally, she was known as Nemene Damendar Boann, a great healer gifted with the Aes Sedai ability to use the One Power. Her powers were so great, she could even save people from the very brink of death. Unlike many of the other Forsaken, who converted to the Dark One only after their own goals were thwarted, Semirhage seems to have always had an evil twist to her personality. She often took pleasure in inflicting an extra amount of pain as part of her healing process, and if she deemed the patient unworthy of healing, she might even allow them an even more exquisitely painful death in lieu of healing. When the governing institution for Aes Sedai, The Hall of Servants, realized her sadistic tendencies, they offered her the options of swearing a Power Bound oath to stop, or be severed from her ability to use the One Power at all. Instead, Semirhage chose to pledge her soul to the Dark One. In his service, she becomes the master of torture... often painful experiments on her victims similar to the Nazi's of our own Age. So great was the fear of falling into her hands that prisoners were know to eat through their own wrists to escape being given over to her.
At the end of the previous age, she was imprisoned with the Dark One during the War of Power. In this age, as the seals on that prison begin to fail, she and the other Forsaken are able to escape and connive to free the Dark One as well. Until her return was known to be a reality, she was used as a warning to mischievous children, much as our own Boogeyman.
In my painting, she is shown in her element...torture. She is dressed in the pleated dress style and color (dark, Charlestonian black green) of the Seanchan nation, with which she is associated in this age. The sick green background color made me think of the type substance she would use for experimental transfusions...and the glowing bulbs of light are "glowbulbs" from her original Age, which sounded like odd forms of our own lightbulbs, though they run on power instead of electricity. Hopefully, I imparted enough fear in the face of her victim. The cheetah skin seemed appropriate to her personality...the killing of an animal for a skin would only seem interesting to her.
Please visit my website to view the other Wheel of Time™, Fairy Tale, and Religious art in my gallery... within each gallery category there is a previous and next button at the bottom of the page:
http://www.edselarnold.com
