Mike Lawrence: Invigorating Darkness

A Parallel Planets piece by Pepe Serapio

The Year of the Goat, or Sheep (it doesn't really matter because the Chinese yáng [羊] can mean either), is upon us, but while most people are busy gorging on the Chinese zodiac animal's peace-loving demeanor, most are forgetting that the same animal has dark attributes as well. Case in point: the Baphomet.

Okay, so maybe that's a stretch, considering the Baphomet isn't Chinese and we are talking about the Chinese zodiac. But as we've come to know, the world is a strange place, and in a global setting, everything can be or is already connected. So, with the Lunar New Year just around the corner, do we blame it on mere coincidence that we were drawn to Mike's pensive rendition of the astral goat? Or did Aries, the Baphomet, and the Chinese yáng (羊) converge in order to set us up? Whatever the case maybe, we thank thee, forces we can't even begin to understand.

Mike Lawrence is South African by birth but this professional illustrator is now based in Atlanta, Georgia. Mike works with pen and ink, sometimes with metal and often with a lot of black, his illustrations as heavy and rich as they dark. Going through a similar portfolio, one would find it hard to sleep easy, dream of rainbows and butterflies, on the same night. When you're staring at images of death, demons, and gore, you tend to feel a lot of dread, rarely anything related to a bloom of carnations, and you instantly find yourself weighed down by the gravity of existence and nonexistence. Now that's not a bad thing—we all need a little darkness every now and then. Yet with Mike's invigorating perspective, these classic themes and more appear completely fresh if not inviting and dare I even say uplifting.

Sure, his art style isn't the stereotypical something you'd send to a friend to cheer them up, but it offers an inspired distraction from everything else, which is arguably a more practical alternative. Mike's style features a painstaking amount of detail that can't be done in the quickest time possible. All that attention and refinement take hours, if not weeks, but the outcome should be more than enough to engage a friend.


Thus, if you're looking to welcome the Year of the Goat a little differently, Mike's the guy whose work you definitely need to check out. Just don't forget to eat your broccoli, kids. Or they will eat you. Eat or be eaten, as the saying goes.

For more of Mike Lawrence's mind-blowing depiction of mysticism and psychedelia, go to his website where you can also buy prints of his work. Most of them, he prints himself (through a kind of sorcery called silkscreening). You should also drop by his Facebook page and Tumblr blog.