Minotaur's Dream - Painted Version

As deviantART is shutting down their deviantGEAR store, I thought I might revisit my original t-shirt design ( [link] ) and make a nice fully painted print available.

I've always found the Minotaur, the illegitimate cursed son of King Minos, to be a tragic figure. Though he is a horrific man-eating hybrid of human and beast, he is not simply a heartless monster. In Greek black-figure and red-figure pottery depicting the Minotaur's death, the he is shown to have a bird escaping from his chest, which is a common representation of the human soul in Greek art. In addition to being called Minotaur (a contraction of Minos' Taurus), he had a human name, Asterion ("starry one"), which he shared with his grandfather. So, I began to wonder, what did pitiable Asterion do while he is trapped in the dark, cramped labyrinth. Did he often gaze upon the few stars visible between the labyrinth's towering walls? Perhaps he dreamt of flying free, like Pegasus, to be freed from his fate as a tool of divine punishment for King Minos.

Despite his monstrous physique, I wanted to push the the idea of him having a pure and delicate heart, so I worked to make his skin look like alabaster. The lack of pigmentation also harkens back to his father (in some versions of the myth), the pure white Cretan Bull.