r/Whimsicalart

First, thank you for browsing my work 🎨 ✨️🙏✨️

I started painting after losing my job and housing in the pandemic and have kept going ever since. In terms of my process, I paint from the unconscious, spontaneously, without foresight into the final result or ultimate subiect matter so almost all these pieces have different paintings underneath. I'lI put on music and enter flow consciousness and allow experiences and other (psychological) material to express itself from my brain, down my arms, and through my fingers onto the canvas. A lot of water goes onto each canvas and half the time my conscious mind thinks, "This is a mistake. This isn't going anywhere. What the heck is this even supposed to be?!" I'lI stop and let it dry and return hours or days or sometimes even weeks later to restart the process.

A lot of emotion/energy finds its way to the surface of my mind during the process and often a feeling of loss, nostalgic sadness, and emptiness comes up. Maybe because these images represent places and experiences that will never be except inside consciousness; experiences that only reside in imagination and offer a lot more peace and tranquility than the turbulence and trauma of the material/physical world.

The pieces also have themes of development and ambiguity of form, probably because of my fascination with evolutionary biology and how one species gives way to a new one; how every being is a becoming since it is always already under pressure (natural selection, for example) to evolve. My mind merges images of butterflies and plants and birds into hybrids of ambiguous symbols in many of these probably for this reason.

The first painting is called "You Are With Me in My Dreams" and was a commissioned piece for someone who lost her mom. The parallel branches represent the two of them and the left one turns away to represent her mom's departure. (She said her mom loved Nature and the stars so there's a lot of personal symbolism there.) Many of the objects are where they "shouldn't" be, such as the flowers and organisms in outer space, vines that double as pillars of light, and so on. I believe this is because dreams themselves are so weird, so haunting, so otherworldly. No matter how many times we dream over our lifetime, they are still strange, like traveling in consciousness to another world, even though dreaming itself is familiar (because it happens over and over).

Anyway, I never got to attend art school (too expensive and parents wouldn't support it), but painting transitional and developmental pieces is a journey and a practice that brings me tremendous fulfillment in the liminal spaces of my unconscious. I hope you enjoyed the virtual tour and thanks again for indulging my text. ✨️😊🙏✨️

This doesn't count as a painting or drawing but here is my lunar moth tapestry I made. It took a while as the yarn is quite thin and the tapestry is on the larger side to what I am used to, but I'm soo happy its finally done!

As a mom to a very rambunctious toddler, it’s taken me about 2 years to get back to being creative. I recently got a cheap watercolor set and just started painting!

Having fun even though I have a lot to learn!

These are 2 clocks I made a while ago, out of felt and upholstery foam.

I know they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but I hope you like them!

I am a fibre artist who has from autism and ADD, I love making sculptures and am really excited at each project that comes up.

Check out my profile for more of my work!

Here's an ACEO I painted in watercolor🌸

I am super happy with how October's edition turned out. I love the fall vibe so much! 🍂 I hope the lovely souls who ordered will love it as much as I loved making it for them 🫶🏻🌼💌

Inside:

• A4 letter + print on the back
• A5 art print, with a postcard on the reverse
• A5 illustrated recipe

My letters and paper goods are always a surprise, so I never share them beforehand. The letter is the main character of this club, it's not really about the art or the extras. It's about taking a moment for yourself, a little pause, like reading a page from a book. I call it a paper ritual.

Oh, and not to forget, your name is handwritten on the letter and is not pre-printed. Also my name at the end of the letter is handwritten to make it all more personal <3

Always wondered what a baby A'Tuin would look like 🙂

Artwork by me, SamDeaconArt