Pickman's Model

Pickman already knows what stands before his canvas. In Pickman's Model, a dark folk song by Unspeakable Tales from Of Those Who Knew, the painter speaks for himself, defending pictures that critics dismiss as madness.

His account leads beneath the city by lantern light, through buried passages to the hungry figures whose faces enter his studio. Every brushstroke brings that hidden world closer to the surface. For Pickman, the disturbing realism of his work is a record of contact.

The challenge eventually turns toward the viewer: the painted monster may contain something recognisably human. Read Pickman’s Model in the Wiki for the story behind the studio and its living models.