Unquiet
Things

In the grey gloaming realm that stretches between the living and the dead, Dylan Garrett Smith’s monochrome reveries unfurl like smoke from a snuffed candle. His artistry is a nocturne played on the bones of forgotten beasts, a serenade to the wild things that lurk just beyond our peripheral vision.

Smith’s canvas is a chiaroscuro otherworld where vitality and decay intertwine in a spectral palimpsest, each layer revealing new depths of existence.

In one haunting tableau, corvids engage in a macabre game of cat’s cradle – or is it shibari? – with a skull, their ebony feathers a stark contrast to the bone’s pallid gleam.

Nearby, a small ram reclines in blissful repose, unaware of the arrows that surround it like a halo of impending doom. This particular piece, a poignant illustration of innocence amidst danger, can be found in my book The Art of Darkness: A Treasury of the Morbid, Melancholic and Macabre.

Suspended in the void, a broken bird’s nest becomes a mobile of bones, dangling precariously and giving dark new meaning to the phrase “cradle to grave.”

A fox bounds away into the darkness, its back turned to us. Its burden, both grisly and beautiful, is revealed: upended skulls serve as macabre baskets, overflowing with phantasmal autumn leaves. This juxtaposition of death and seasonal beauty encapsulates the cyclical nature of existence, a memento mori adorned with life’s fleeting splendor.

In Smith’s hands, a deer skull becomes a temple, its antlers reaching skyward like gothic spires, enrobed in a tapestry of forest flora that speaks of life’s persistence in the face of death.

Elsewhere, rats perform a macabre quadrille, their lithe forms weaving intricate patterns around a juicy pomegranate – a Persephone’s bargain made flesh, the promise of cyclic renewal amidst decay.

I have a fixation on “hands holding things,” and in Dylan Garrett Smith’s hands this obsession finds a dark playground of endless fascination. His monochrome world is populated by a menagerie of spindly, clawed fingers that grasp and clutch at various objects, each image a haunting vignette that pulls at the threads of the subconscious.

In one particularly arresting piece, skeletal hands cradle a guttering candle, its flame a fragile light against encroaching darkness, while rosary drape gently about around the wrists, as if anchoring the soul in its futile quest for salvation.

In another striking image, a snake coils sinuously around an arm, its scales a stark contrast to the human flesh streaked with dark, bleeding veins of dirt. From this liminal fusion of animal and human sprout leaves and berries, as if the arm itself is transforming into a branch, blurring the lines between flesh and flora, predator and prey.

These spectral appendages haunt the penumbral spaces of Smith’s work and our psyche. A wrist pierced by an arrow evokes a pagan stigmata, while elsewhere, a disembodied sorcerer’s hand plays puppeteer to a decaying apple, its fishhook strings a grim reminder of the manipulations that lie beneath life’s surface.

Each eerie hand draws me in, their skeletal digits beckoning me closer, telling stories of grasping desire, occult power, and the ever-present reach of mortality. They speak to something primal, a recognition of hands as tools of creation and destruction,  acting out dark fantasies and ancient rites.

Smith renders these visions in ash, chalk-lead, and ink on black cotton rag, his choice of medium as much a part of the story as the images themselves. The ash speaks of transformation and endings, the chalk-lead whispers of impermanence, while the ink etches permanence into the ephemeral. On the black canvas, these materials come alive, each stroke a revelation of light amidst shadow, of form emerging from void.

This interplay of light and dark extends beyond technique, embodying the very essence of Smith’s artistic philosophy. His work is a meditation on the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, on the beauty found in decay and the inevitability of nature’s reclamation. In Smith’s art, ecological concerns intertwine with occult symbolism, creating a visual language that speaks to both the natural world and the supernatural realms that haunt our collective unconscious.

This shadow play extends beyond the confines of gallery walls and into the pulsing heart of the music world. For over half his life, he’s been weaving his spectral visions into the very fabric of the industry, birthing nearly a thousand designs that clothe the devotees of darkness. From the hallowed racks of Hot Topic to the curated collections of Foxblood, Smith’s creations lurk, waiting to ensnare unsuspecting shoppers in their gossamer threads of ink and imagination.

Throughout his career, his artistry has been embraced by titans of the metal scene, with Smith creating designs for renowned bands whose music shakes our very souls. One can almost hear the eldritch roar of guitars and the seismic percussion echoing through his creations, each design a portal to a concert at the end of the world. “Through these designs,” Smith muses, “many of my favorite artists are now my closest friends.” It’s a testament to the alchemical power of his art, transmuting admiration into connection, fandom into friendship.

He has also lent his talent to the folks at Cadabra Records, where — small world!– I was perusing their website years ago and came across a spoken-word Dracula album, narrated by the one and only Tony Todd. “Hot dog!” I thought, “This is amazing! But wait a second…I recognize the style of this artwork…!” And sure enough, there are several albums in their catalog whose covers are awash in Dylan’s particular brand of darkness.

To stand before a Dylan Garrett Smith piece is to feel the veil between worlds grow gossamer-thin. Time becomes elastic; the boundaries between observer and observed blur. We find ourselves not simply viewing foxes and snakes, skulls and hands, but inhabiting a liminal space where the arcane and the ecological converge.

This is art as ritual, as invocation. Each piece a spell cast against forgetting, against the numbing comfort of artificial light. Smith’s work demands we rekindle our relationship with shadow, with the rich loam of decay that nourishes new life. It whispers of old gods and older truths, of the wisdom found in bone and root and stone.

In an age of ecological crisis, where the wild places shrink beneath our ever-expanding footprint, Smith’s art serves as both warning and balm. It reminds us that nature’s triumph is inevitable, not as a cataclysm to be feared, but as a homecoming to be embraced. To engage with Dylan Garrett Smith’s art is to pilgrimage into the heart of darkness – not as an absence of light, but as a fertile void teeming with possibility.

It is to remember that we, too, are creatures of ash and shadow, of bloom and decay. In his funereal monochrome, we glimpse not just the face of nature, but our own wild souls gazing back, asking to be remembered, to be set free. In Smith’s stark compositions, we find a memento vivere cloaked in the guise of a memento mori – a poignant reminder that in breakdown lies the promise of renewal, in endings, the whisper of beginnings.

Between these poles of existence, Smith reveals the raw, mesmerizing complexity of life’s perpetual cycle.

For all the haunting grimness of his canvases, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more amiable soul than Dylan Garrett Smith.

In my few DMs with him, our conversations have meandered through art and perfume, revealing an artist as relatable as he is talented. Smith’s Instagram offers a window into this duality: interspersed among his spectral creations are posts that showcase a genuine love for his artistic community and a delightfully goofy sense of humor.

I’m particularly fond of his allergy season jokes accompanying some of his woodland flora vignettes – a cheeky reminder that even artists who traffic in the realms of decay and darkness aren’t immune to the prosaic irritations of pollen. This juxtaposition of the macabre and the mundane, the profound and the playful, adds yet another layer of depth to Smith’s already multifaceted persona.

In contemplating Smith’s art, one can’t help but draw parallels to another realm of sensory experience: perfume. Both dark art and fragrance possess the power to evoke visceral reactions, bypassing our logical mind to trigger something primal within us. Like Smith’s meticulously crafted monochrome visions, perfume can transport us to liminal spaces, conjuring the essence of spectral forests and forgotten rituals in an instant. There’s an intimacy to both, a way of getting under the skin and lingering, transforming our perception of the world around us.

In the earthy notes of soil and roots, the metallic tang of blood, or the ethereal whisper of smoke, we find olfactory echoes of Smith’s visual themes – a shared fascination with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that permeates both art forms. Just as Smith’s hands grasp candles and cradle skulls, certain scents can hold us in their thrall, telling stories of nature’s reclamation and the thin veil between worlds.

I recently inquired with Dylan about his favorites, and he got back to me with the following …

“Since moving to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania a few years ago, I had to completely overhaul my fragrance collection – everything I had was dark, smoky, spicy, and warm for the cooler weather and now that’s it’s like 80 all year long, I’ve had to do some soul searching and branch out, haha!”

Some of my favorites right now:

“Vertical Oud” by Hermetica Paris
“La Capitale” by Xerjoff
“Super Cedar” by Byredo
“Oud Wood” by Tom Ford (author note: ME TOO, IT’S SO GOOD!)
“Woodphoria” by Boy Smells
“Bulletproof” by Tokyomilk Dark
“FFCC33” (“Sunglow”) by Hans Hendley

Also, according to Dylan, “If you’re reading this from Southern California or New England, I have some events and art shows coming up that I’d love to see you at! Check out the Upcoming Events page on my site for more info!”