Description
David Roxbury (American, Unknown)
Every now and then, a painting shows up that feels like it got smuggled out of someone’s dream. Desert Sirens and Sunlit Serpents (2019) by outsider artist David Roxbury is one of those pieces—equal parts myth, mirage, and marine fantasy, soaked in color and brimming with questions.
At first glance, it’s easy to get lost in the riot of imagery: a nude figure parting the water like a desert oracle, holding what looks like a black-and-white patterned sun-disk (or is it a moon? or a plate?). Behind her, a golden serpent coils across the horizon—part dragon, part cosmic ouroboros—radiating like a desert god mid-transformation.
There are cacti. There are floating sandstone pillars pouring waterfalls into a lavender sea. There’s a white whale, a bright red fish, and tropical creatures you’d expect to find in a coral reef, not sharing real estate with Southwestern rock formations. The entire bottom of the canvas bursts into undersea fantasia—curving shells, striped fish, electric flora—swimming beneath a molten sky that looks like it could melt your watch.
Is it symbolic? Almost definitely. Is it decipherable? Not exactly. And that’s the point. Roxbury isn’t painting to explain—he’s painting to evoke. This is a portal. A visual fever dream. An allegory with no glossary. It’s outsider art at its most unapologetically strange and totally captivating.
For collectors, this piece is a gem. Unlike many of Roxbury’s other works, this one softens the harder edges of dystopia and sci-fi, offering something more sensual and surreal. But it still carries his signature: dream logic, clashing themes, and deeply personal mythology.
The figure at the center—serene, powerful, almost priestess-like—feels like a guide. She’s not asking you to understand, just to see. And maybe to feel the weight of the sun, the shimmer of the water, the hiss of something ancient slithering behind your back. This is the kind of art that lives with you. You don’t just hang it—you return to it. Again and again. Always finding something new. Own it if you dare.
