A Striking Coincidence

Recently my friend in art and fellow ArtWanted.com member Patrick Pierson has uploaded one of his older paintings called The Crossing to his ArtWanted portfolio. You can see the painting below.

Patrick Pierson "The Crossing" © 2001

The painting itself is a very unusual and interesting take on the Crucifixion theme, but that's not the subject of this blog post. What really caught my attention (to put it mildly) was the striking resemblance to my own draft made somewhere between 2000-2002 (roughly the same period as Patrick's painting). You can see the draft below.


There are certain differences -- for instance, the composition is reversed in my version. But the similarities are striking nonetheless, as you can see yourself. The most amazing thing is that Patrick had no chance to see the draft -- nobody had seen it except me until now.

Naturally, Patrick was shocked no less than myself. He wrote to me: "It must be that we are twin sons of different mothers. Stranger still, my first sketches for THE CROSSING show Golgotha as a human skull with the cross sticking out it as the skull cracks. Way too creepy. Anyway, what a weird coincidence!"

The Georgian inscriptions on the draft indicate, that there should be an outer space view in the background and, more importantly, the actual geographical point, where the Crucifixion took place, should be clearly recognizable on the globe.

It's indeed amazing how the similar creative ideas drift inside the heads of different artists. And I'm really glad that such a marvelous coincidence happened with the two of us, because I hold Patrick Pierson in high respect for his great skill and wild imagination. His surrealistic paintings are full to the brim with creative insanity, and his hyper-realistic oil pastels deserve to be regarded as living classics.

To see more artwork from this brilliant artist, please visit http://www.PlanetZootopia.com.