The artist of the Mystical Archive Faithless Looting card talks about the reactions of the MTG community, and her artistic style.
Carly Mazur’s first commission for Wizards of the Coast turned out to be controversial among the Magic: The Gathering community. When her alternate art designs for Faithless Looting and Harmonize were first revealed during the Strixhaven: School of Mages spoiler season, many fans criticized her art style because of how different it is from what’s typically found on MTG art. They compared the art to a bad Photoshop or Microsoft Paint project, and the piece spawned a lot of memes in the Magic community.
The Connecticut artist creates illustrations that look digital by taking advantage of dissonant artistic elements despite being created on canvas. Like a lot of her art, the Mystical Archive version of Faithless Looting features realistic female subjects with detailed facial features and skin, and photorealism is heavily contrasted by the artist’s use of surrealist patterns and bold colors.
Speaking to Dotesports, Mazur talked about the reaction to her Faithless Looting piece and what she thought about the criticisms. “Faithless Looting dropped and all of a sudden it’s breaking Twitter,” told the outlet. “At first, people thought it was a fake card. Then people saw it was real and all the heavy opinions came. I know not everyone is going to be a fan of the style. I hope people warm up to it. I’m taking the criticisms to heart and will just do more work.”
Mazur’s piece was inspired by the tarot card Temperance to help bring to life the idea of balance, and the artist told Dotesports that she wanted to play off the sacrificial element of Faithless Looting, which lets the player discard two cards and draw two cards. Faithless Looting is one of the most-played cards in MTG Arena’s Historic Constructed format. But some fans appreciated the art for its unique style, pointing out to the full version Mazur shared, which revealed the rest of the art restricted by the card frame. Mazur said that she wasn’t sure if her style would fit with the general artistic standard Wizards of the Coast set for modern MTG. She went on talk about her decision to expand on her own style instead of focusing on a potentially more lucrative editorial route.
“I was born from nerdy stuff and geeky stuff,” Mazur told DotEsports. “It was this odd place of feeling at home in the genre, but my artwork being so different. I’m glad I stuck with it. I’d get people saying there’s no one else in the market that has what you offer. That I’m going to make that space.”
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Mazur told the outlet that she’s encouraged by overwhelming support she received despite the backlash from the Magic community. Her experience working on her version of Faithless Looting solidifies her artistic ideals. “Don’t try to emulate other people or paint what you think that other people want,” she said. “Just create what you want to create and you’ll find a market for it.”
Mazur said that she is open to working with Wizards of the Coast again. Personally, I would like to see more of her art style in Magic.
