The Monk begins to recognise the cards that tell him an artist's life is about to be laid out before him. He wondered why he was drawing on this information. He found the lives of artists tawdry and vacuous. He thought much of their work slapdash and banal. Was this the new century that the Butes' enterprise was ushering in? He lays down the ace of wands, page of pentangles, ten of wands. Here is an artist holding his charcoal to measure the figure, or maybe a landscape. He is standing in a field holding a gold coin - it suggests to the Monk something worked in the open air: a thing wrought in real time in the fields and under the trees with the sky around him, something reflecting the light. The ten of wands suggests a fellowship, an association of like-minded artists. Perhaps this artist is one of those who helped define this group, bind them together and delineate the rules. But then in the nine of wands he is outside the group, a little battered and bruised. He doesn't appear to have been ejected, but perhaps he doesn't feel as if he has done as well as the others.
King of pentangles, knight of cups, Death and The Lovers show a change of mood. The king of pentangles is undoubtedly the painter's patron and the knight of cups suggests travel, by the artist. Death would seem to mimic the previous card as if behind the journey is a desire to escape from death, or perhaps that death follows the artist on his journey. Perhaps the patron has paid for this artist to travel in the knowledge that he is dying. The Lovers, the card that follows is very poignant in this context. In the background of the lovers' nuptials is a mountain and in the following cards the sea. The page of cups and the page of swords suggest the artist is inspired by the sea and here wields his paintbrush with the of incisiveness of a sword.
Rider Waite pack
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