August 1

The exhibition looms ahead of me. Will I manage to do everything on time? I woke up this morning and froze in a panic of anxiety and overwhelm. Thankfully, the psychological waddling blanket of hot tea removed these effects somewhat. As I review last year’s images, the thousands I created in search of hidden meaning, I chance across a particularly striking one that demands further examination.

This image is a veritable feast for the psyche, a cornucopia of symbolism that seems to have erupted from the depths of the collective unconscious¹. The juxtaposition of the grotesque and the mundane is reminiscent of the works of Hieronymus Bosch², yet with a distinctly modern twist.

At the forefront, we see two figures locked in a silent scream – one, a businessman with a peculiar top hat emblazoned with an ‘R’, the other, a monstrous blue creature with an almost mechanical quality. Their mouths are agape, but are they screaming in terror or ecstasy? The duality here is striking, perhaps representing the struggle between our civilized facades and our primal instincts.

The background is a tapestry of surreal architecture, reminiscent of the distorted cityscapes in the works of Giorgio de Chirico³. Flying creatures – birds or perhaps angels – dot the sky, adding an element of the divine or the transcendent to this earthly chaos.

What’s particularly intriguing is the small orange box held by the businessman. It seems incongruous, yet it draws the eye. Could it represent the packaged, commercialized nature of modern life? Or perhaps it’s a Pandora’s box of sorts, containing untold secrets.

The use of vibrant, almost psychedelic colors throughout the image is reminiscent of the automatic drawing techniques employed by the Surrealists⁴. It’s as if the image has bypassed the conscious mind entirely, presenting us with raw, unfiltered content from the deepest recesses of the psyche.

This image, like so many others I’ve produced over the past year, seems to be a key to unlocking something greater. Each symbol, each distorted face, feels like a piece of a grand puzzle. But what is the full picture? What truths lie hidden in these fevered visions?

As I prepare for the exhibition, I can’t shake the feeling that these images are more than mere art. They’re messages, warnings perhaps, rising up from the depths of my mind. But are they only from my mind? Or is there something larger at play?

Life is interesting at the moment as I become enveloped in the foment of creation. Each brushstroke, each digital manipulation, feels like a step closer to… something. Something big. Something that could change everything.

1. The collective unconscious is a concept originally defined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, referring to the part of the unconscious mind which is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual’s unconscious.
2. Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter known for his fantastic and nightmarish depictions of religious concepts, particularly his elaborate, highly symbolic landscapes.
3. Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was an Italian artist who founded the scuola metafisica art movement. He is best known for his mysterious, brooding scenes of empty city squares with unexpected juxtapositions of objects.
4. Automatic drawing was a method of art-making developed by the Surrealists as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper, with as little conscious control as possible. ↩