Hello, and thank you for visiting ...
Here you will discover the work of Richard A. Dengel, a self-taught artist and designer. Having many and various influences, his media include digital photography, computer drawing programs, and plain old-fashioned acrylic paints applied with pens and brushes.
A brief tour of the site
The Galleries page contains two main collections.
The Photo Gallery exhibits images mostly shot in the Philadelphia area. Though occasionally abstract, the pieces attempt to express the artist's admiration for the wood, water, wing, and stone of the local outdoors.
The second gallery is an exhibit of paintings. All are acrylics, typically using a wood or masonite ground. His influences include medieval illuminists, Heironymous Bosch, William Blake, and Carl Jung via his Red Book. Gnostic mythology, tarot, or alchemical symbolism permeates his work. Often he buttresses his paintings with poetry or versions of sayings drawn from the Gnostic Nag Hammaddi Library. More about this later...
On the Tarot page you will find an exhibit of Richard’s Gnostic Tarot. This deck is loosely based upon a Sethian-Gnostic creation myth called The Secret Book of John (also found in the Nag Hammadi Library). Fragments of the Gnostic Tarot were published the Enyclodepia of the Tarot, Volume III, released by US Game Systems. Additional resources for this deck include A.E. Waite’s Rider Deck, the traditional Marseilles Tarot, and Aliester Crowley’s Book of Thoth.
Richard’s fascination with the Secret Book of John continues on the page with that same name. Here you can peruse an illuminated retelling of the creation myth, tracing the evolution of the universe from its archetypal Fullness to its fall into disharmony and eventual restoration. It is not a literal, word-for-word rendering of the text, but contains instead many poetic embellishments. This is, or tries to be, a visual song rather than a “new” translation or piece of scholarship.
Richard show-cases his life-long study of the American Civil War on his Games page. Mixing art with the science of game design, he has produced a tactical combat simulation system called Rebel Yell. Originally the flagship game of Game Publicatons Group (1993), the system has continued to evolve. It now includes 3 desktop published games covering the battles of New Market, Brice’s Crossroads, Iuka, and Newberne. Numerous and smaller variations continue to appear in professional publications like Old Soldiers Magazine and White Dog Games. Please visit the Games page for more details.
If you find this work interesting, please feel free to write Richard via email (richard@dengelwood.com). He makes all of his work commercially accessible, so contact him directly for details.