(Don't take pride in your wealth, nor in your body, for this body is weaker than the mud upon the potter's wheel).

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Toor’s scenes possess a kind of solemnity or quietude that does not suggest equilibrium so much as tender regard. Toor’s protagonists, obvious stand-ins for the artist himself, at least at an earlier moment in his life, seem held in suspension between two worlds, Old and New, never entirely at home in either. But he also holds them at emotional arm’s length, as if these images were tempered by time, less observations than memories, and they begin to assume the lineaments of archetype, despite their depiction of technology à la mode.

(Many of the pictures have an overall green palette, appropriate, perhaps, for the nocturnal illumination of bars or apartment parties—although more readily suggesting fin de siècle gaslight—but also reminiscent of the discoloured varnish of old paintings hanging for generations in smoke-filled drawing rooms.)

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

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