Guybrush Threepwood Sailing in a Coffin Boat — Print & Oil Painting

It is a coffin. Look along the side of the boat and the handles are still screwed to it, three of them on the visible flank, and the lid has simply been taken off. In this story that is not a metaphor: the way across the swamp to the voodoo shop is to paddle a coffin, and here it is, afloat, with a crew of three.

Guybrush stands amidships in a long blue coat over a white shirt, sleeves rolled, holding a small dark object up between finger and thumb and studying it. On the gunwale to his right a monkey crouches with a paddle under one arm and its tail curled down over the side. In the bow a small hound rests its chin on the edge with a ring of iron keys hanging from its jaws.

Behind them, and this is the good strange idea in the picture, an enormous treasure map has been stretched between the swamp trees like a painted backdrop: coastlines in green and ochre, a dotted route, a compass rose, all of it slightly translucent so that the trunks show through it. Warm points of light float in the air in front.

The water is flat and grey-green, the reeds are black cut-outs at the edges, and the words of the series title are lettered in orange and gold in the lower right corner as though the whole thing were a record sleeve rather than a scene. Part of our Monkey island collection. The swamp itself is painted in the village of wrecked hulls, and the same man is painted straight in the jungle portrait.