The Nightmare-Collision Art of S.D. Tullis

S.D. Tullis is a weird fiction writer and the winner of D.F. Lewis' "Win Immortality" competition for the latest and last edition of Nemonymous: Null Immortalis. The appearance of a new online gallery also shows that Tullis is a capable and interesting artist. His work to date is a curious blend: the horrific, the historical, and the nightmarish meld into an eerie aesthetic that reeks nostalgia and madness.


Stylistically, many Tullis works bring to mind the endlessly terrible collages pioneered by Harry O. Morris and Aeron Alfrey. Those photographers of outlandish and dark horror also draw on bygone sights from other ages, and then mutate them in a way mere time never could, but which hell itself might. In Tullis case, however, the historical elements seem like backdrops in a demon haunted world the peoples and places of the past would never guess existed around them. His take on "The Mass" above is an excellent example, and suggests an unlikely geographer's role for Tullis more than anything else.


But this is not his only role. Amid the indeterminable battlefields, mosaics, and cathedrals are pure horrors like the "Mossman." This creature inhabits a world tenuously balanced between horror and fantasy. In one way, the thing might be viewed as a product of nature warping analagous to Tullis' endarkening of history. If this is the intent, then nowhere is a safe harbor in the twisted vistas proffered by this artist. Civilization across the ages is corrupted, and the untamed wilds outside its grip are no better. His is a kingdom where terror and strangeness truly reign supreme over all realms.

-Grim Blogger