A Nameless Deck is the working title (or lack there of a proper title) for one of my current tarot deck projects. It’s more of a personal project at the moment, just something I’m enjoying working on as free time permits. I currently have six cards near finished and two finished featured below. I intend to add cards as I finish them.
In my recent years I’ve really grown to enjoy traditional and digital collaging. I especially like taking the classic artwork I was raised on and reworking it. I’ve done this with my Isidore Tarot and Madam Lydia Wilhelmina’s Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes. So with this project I turned to the work of John Waterhouse.
Now, Waterhouse, like many of my favorite classic artists, have decks out there featuring their work. I don’t want to redo that. I want to take existing art and rework it to be something familiar but quite different. So with these collages I’ve been using my love of over the top headdresses for the characters and putting them into new scenes. I absolutely adore those old white wig and brick-a-brack headpieces of old, or the elaborate head dresses from the Asian and Indian cultures. This is my take on that. I use classic art from all genres to create the headpieces and place them with Waterhouse’s beauties. The card symbolism will be my own take on the tarot. Right now I’m working on the individual card meanings with a good tarot friend of mine. We shall see what comes.
I’ve had a few inquiries about the project and when I plan to release it. I honestly don’t know because it is one of those things I work on when I have the free time. I have one publisher interested in helping me develop it though, so that might at some point make it more of a priority and bring it to life quicker. It depends on how things work out with the publisher. That is new territory for me. 🙂
