After an hour of wandering around behind my tour group, it became apparently the Advil hadn't worked and my headache was worse. Eventually I excused myself and wandered off to take a moment for myself and hope the pain subsided.

It kind of did, after I felt my skull explode. Something felt like it pushed itself out through my head-and for fear of some bizarre injury, I instinctively checked with my hands. Instead of finding holes pouring out brains and blood, I found instead two curved hard bone-like protrusions. Following the curve to the tip, my mind flashed to a sculpture we'd passed earlier, "Horns?" I gasped.

Now more determined to hide myself I picked up the pace, while feeling my ears tingle. Though my arms itched and my legs began to complain, but I was too concerned for being mistaken for the anti-Christ that I darted to an area in the gardens closed off for construction. Passing the dilapidated gate, I stopped to take a breather.

Then I fell, I saw my shorts shredded- and new brown-hairy legs trapped awkwardly in the shards of my jeans. They ended in split hooves- which had mutilated my shoes and socks as well. Tearing them off, I sat there for a moment and pondered, this wasn't so bad, was it?

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This is a form that I used to associate myself with, it started as joke in freshman year of college and eventually I basically never revisited it, except with Otto. It’s really hard to imagine myself as something other than human, but sometimes it’s all right to pretend. As I’ve mentioned my work feeds off of history, and this one is personal history.

Back in Florence, I probably filled a sketchbook with fauns, nymphs and classical gods and Saints. I miss the feel of carved humans and deities hovering around in every building, all products of an earlier more meaningful time. This is one way I’m trying to deal with my separation from that rich history. I don’t have baroque fountains, renaissance paintings and Gothic churches to see and feel my sense of awe, I’m trying my damndest to find it elsewhere.

So as a character, this is Philippus, the Faun, but as he’s an extension of myself he can go by the name “Ageaus” as well. He’ll pop every know and again before I’m ready to reboot Age(the merman)’s art again.
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To put names to everything, the background comes from Villa d'este in Lazio, near rome.

Colored pencil on paper, 9 x 11.5
Art and Character are © to me.

Ricordo Bene.