Chris Conn Askew

Chris Conn Askew, M96 2007

In His Dark Materials, the Philip Pullman trilogy of which The Golden Compass is a part, every person has a daemon, an animal companion that is his or her reflection and soul. When you’re a child, your daemon is changeable; it can be whatever it wants to be at the moment, a snake, an otter, a cat, a seagull, a monkey or a moth. When you’re older, your daemon permanently “settles” into the form most suited to you. People converse with their daemons, and daemons interact with each other, but a person may not address the daemon of another.

This probably has nothing to do with the art of Chris Conn Askew, but some of his pictures bring it to mind.


(There’s a nice piece on Askew in Juxtapoz No. 82, if you can find a copy.)