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Sherwood Smith

@eldf3n

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Modern mountain folklore. Bold illustration inspired by wilderness, weird creatures, and life in the American West.

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Puddle-lit reflections taken in Telluride, Colorado by @eldf3n

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2 years ago

By pen, by brush, by the call of unseen muses—I toil. A sorcery unbidden by others, wrought in the silence of my own cathedral of despair. Each stroke, a ritual; each hour, an incantation to exorcise the demons that writhe unseen.

None crave the artifact; none speak its name. Yet, is this not the artist’s path? To conjure from chaos a mirror none dare look upon?

And still, I create. Not for adoration, nor for gold. But for the alchemy of the soul: turning anguish into light, and light into form. This is the Work. This is the Will.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the art. taken in Seattle, Washington by @eldf3n

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2 years ago

Exited to release my 4th graphic for the @gilsonsnow Fusion skis. taken in Route 66 by @eldf3n

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2 years ago

by @eldf3n

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4 days ago

The cabin had already been larger than itself
when we arrived.

Babayaga was inside the goat,
or the goat was inside Babayaga—
something wet between the teeth,
something that remembered having a name.

Nobody asked why the walls kept receding.

The forest had gone quiet in the way forests do
when they recognize the wrong animal.

We left the door open.

This was considered respectful.

26/27 @gilsonsnow Fusion taken in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania by @eldf3n

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18 days ago

The old mirrors are coming back.

A contemporary revival of the American bar mirror.

Once they hung in dim bars and strange little rooms, catching smoke, neon, faces, and advertisements for things nobody remembers drinking.

I always liked the mirrors more than the advertisements.

So I’m putting something else in the glass.

Cryptids. Folklore. Mountain ghosts. Things that may or may not have been there in the first place.

Transparent ink. Silvered glass. Old frames.

The image changes when you move.

The first ones are almost ready.

Keep looking. by @eldf3n

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19 days ago

The art is only half-born in the making.
The rest is written in scars, wax, and concrete. by @eldf3n

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21 days ago

I don’t remember the forest being this wet, or the trees leaning inward like that, or why the old cars are stacked so high you can’t see where they end. There’s something with wings sitting at the top, something small squealing in a stroller below, and two pale figures moving between the trunks like they’re looking for something they already found.

New one for @gilsonsnow. by @eldf3n

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25 days ago

by @eldf3n

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a month ago

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a month ago

The maps forgot it first.

Then the names.

Now only the sun remembers,
hanging overhead
like an unblinking witness.

There is a hole
cut into the skin of the Southwest—
too round for erosion,
too old for history.

No sage.
No cactus.
No mercy.

Only dust
ground so fine
it no longer belongs to the earth.

The wind kneels there,
not to rest,
but to listen.

Some nights,
the darkness climbs out
just far enough
to remember the stars.

Travelers call it empty.

The desert
has never made that mistake. by @eldf3n

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2 months ago

The Fifth Wire

The road forgot its own name long before I arrived.

The lines once painted to divide the world had been licked clean by winter,
as if some patient animal had spent centuries erasing every instruction ever given.
Only the telephone poles remained—
black vertebrae disappearing into weather,
holding conversations with a sky too old to answer.

I drove because standing still felt louder.

Out here,
distance is not measured in miles.
It is measured in the number of ghosts willing to walk beside you
before dawn scares them back beneath the sage.

The mountains watched,
not with kindness,
but with the detached curiosity of forgotten gods
who have seen every empire rust into fence wire.

A dead coyote grinned from the shoulder,
teeth polished white by sun.
A warning.
A welcome.
No difference.

Somewhere beneath the asphalt
an older trail still breathes—
hoofprints,
wagon wheels,
bare feet,
things with claws,
things with names no tongue remembers.

Every road is built atop another road.
Every prayer atop another grave.

The engine hummed like a tired hymn.
The windshield gathered insects
the way memory gathers regret:
without asking permission.

I passed abandoned gas stations
whose broken signs still promised
LAST FUEL FOR 87 MILES.
They felt less like businesses
and more like shrines to a civilization
that believed movement could outrun itself.

But the desert keeps excellent records.

It remembers every footprint.
Every promise.
Every body.
Every version of you
that swore this would be the last lonely drive.

By dusk,
the horizon had become so thin
I could no longer tell
where earth surrendered to heaven.

Perhaps it never did.

Perhaps the road was never leading anywhere.

Perhaps it was simply sanding me down—
mile after mile—
until all that remained
was another weathered stone
rolling quietly
through the enormous machinery
of the American West. by @eldf3n

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2 months ago