“That Which Begins and Ends” // 2024

Title: "That Which Begins and Ends"

Year: 2024

Medium: Watercolor and Gouache on cotton paper 

Size: 15x20in

This is an original work created for the Pantheon series by Aly Parrott, and is currently on view in the Rotunda at Albany City Hall in the Odyssey exhibition. 

***This listing is for the ORIGINAL work. If you purchase this work, you will receive it within 10 days of the deinstallation of Odyssey which runs through March 31, 2025. 

Though this work stands alone and its interpretation is completely up to you, the viewer, it was created as part of a series called Pantheon, which depicts various entities from Aly's original fantasy world. Everything--the story, the writing, the imagery, and the concepts--are original, and may not be reproduced without express written permission of the artist. To read the story of That Which Begins and Ends," continue below.

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"In the beginning, before the sky or the stars; before the clay beneath your feet, or the air in your lungs; before the waves started clawing their way up the shores, and before the great limbs of forest trees reached for the sky; there was the void, Inanis.

Inanis was nothing. It was an emptiness so complete and so inescapable, we cannot now—nor could we ever—comprehend it. It was the absence of matter, of light, of all things. 

And yet. From Inanis, came everything; the sky, the stars, the clay, the air, the waves, and the trees. From Inanis, came the Vetarae, the Ancient Ones, and they scattered across the newly wrought stars, bringing with them raw and primal forces, upon which the Universe was built. Whether the ones that brought these things into being were released by the will of Inanis--or if they escaped--is not known. What is known, is that they still live among us, drawing around them continents of their own creation, where their worshippers and non-worshippers alike embody their ideals. 

There are those in remote places, who hold Inanis as the one true god, due to its position as the nexus of creation, and they spend entire lifetimes working to comprehend its nature--with some seeking to bring it back.